Opens at Varsity, Fri., May 2. Not rated. 89 minutes.
Brainy Polly (The O.C.'s Shannon Lucio) has just been accepted to Harvard, meaning she'll soon leave behind her three best pals from high school. So, two weeks before delivering the valedictorian speech, naturally she sets out to steal $100,000 from her father's bank—this to fund a bone-marrow transplant for the dying mother of her dweeb-rocker friend. (The other two members of the suspiciously pimple-free gang consist of her dumb jock boyfriend and her unacknowledged crush object, some kind of slacker hunk genius in the American Beauty mold.) Also, Polly wants to strike back at her cheatin' dad (Adam Arkin), but old people are boooring! so let's ignore that tangent. Shot with all the HD video artistry of an infomercial, Graduation is a CliffsNotes heist movie, apparently written from the video-box blurbs on a stroll through Blockbuster. The dull mechanics of the crime planning and its consequence-free execution distract from the important issue at hand—not the mom's cancer, not the American health-care system (sick? Rob a bank!), not the theft, not the uncertain future after graduation, but prom night. Priorities, people! The teens' real question here oughtn't be "What should I do with my life?" but rather "What should I wear?"
French Noir at SAM
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