Good cast, nice production values, but a weak script. If every review of a Hollywood studio feature was loaded into a blender, mixed together, and summarised into a sentence, that would be the review. Good cast, nice production values, but a weak script. Take, as an example, the 1994 light drama With Honors. The cast is great, led by Joe Pesci and Brendan Fraser, and do a lot of the heavy lifting in making it a relatively engaging work. The film looks very slick and atmospheric, thanks to director Alek Keshishian and cinematographer Sven Nykvist. The screenplay, by William Mastrosimone, starts strong, wobbles for a section, and then collapses into maudlin sentimentality. I swear it is the same story nearly every time: good cast, nice production values, but a weak script.

Fraser plays Montgomery “Monty” Kessler, a Harvard student completing his seniors thesis in government and sharing a house with a group of fellow students. A computer mishap followed by a physical one sees Monty lose the only surviving copy of his thesis in the university library’s basement. When he goes downstairs to retrieve it, it has already been snatched by homeless man Simon Wilder. Knowing a good opportunity when he sees it, Wilder holds the thesis to ransom: he will return it to Monty page by page in return for gifts of food, alcohol, and shelter.

Pesci is great; to be honest, he always is. Even in a ridiculous wig that makes him weirdly resemble Fisher Stevens, he demonstrates a sharp handle on character, clarity, and comic timing. He forms a distinctive character as well that stands apart from his other, more famous, roles. Meanwhile Brendan Fraser gives an intelligent and dignified performance that likewise showcases just what a superb performer he is. Audiences and critics alike really slept on his talents. It was only when he made a comeback in the Oscar-winning The Whale that everybody really looked back to see what a marvellous actor he has always been.

The supporting cast are very good, and includes the likes of Patrick Dempsey, Moira Kelly, and Josh Hamilton. Gore Vidal, playing Harvard academic Pitkannen, feels rather out of place – after all, it is Gore Vidal – but performs his role well.

When the film focuses on a privileged Harvard student learning life lessons from a homeless intellectual, it sits on very firm and entertaining ground. When that narrative shifts into a maudlin melodrama about a terminally ill man facing his life’s mistakes, it immediately becomes much less interesting. The mid-film shift from one story to the other is messy, and leaves a lot story potential on the table. The end result is good, and broadly entertaining, but it could have been so much better. Still, it shows potential for Keshishian, whose only feature credit before this was the ground-breaking documentary Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991). After this he only directed one more feature: the 2006 romantic comedy Love (and Other Disasters). I feel that there was a much more successful director waiting in the wings that we never got to see.