I think the critics, generally, have been a little too tough on this adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel, set in the early 1950s at a small liberal arts university in Ohio. I quite enjoyed travelling along with the main character, a too-smart-for-his-own-good boy from New Jersey, from a very modest background, who must navigate, as an outsider, the world of WASPs, wealth and privilege, and girls. The verbal battles between this smart boy and the even smarter dean (wonderfully played by Tracy Letts) are alone worth the price of admission.
