"Rushmore" is a small indie film with enough bizarre qualities to make it interesting, but not quite enough to make it good. The story concerns a young man, Max, who attends an elite private school named "Rushmore." Max is not academically gifted, indeed he struggles to make 50 in most of his classes, but in extra-curricula activities he excels. He is either the founder or the president of almost all the clubs in the school, in many cases, both.

The combination of credible acting by Jason Schwartzman and thoughtful direction by Wes Anderson makes Max a believable character. He wears his uniform impeccably and has a sincere weirdness about him that is strangely appealing. And Anderson captures the ambiguity of midteen years and its combination of maturity and naivete to perfection. I know someone just like Max, and every time the camera gazes penetratingly at him, it's exactly like you're in the presence of an in your face and very intense teenager.

Max is befriended by multi-millionaire Herman Blume, played by Bill Murray. It’s a strange friendship, since he is the father of Max's school chums, but the movie trades heavily on its strangeness so Blume's goofy attraction to Max is not unexpected. And, in the grand cycle of life, Max and Hermann are equi-distant from the center. Max is approaching maturity and Hermann has had enough of it. His marriage has collapsed, his children are a disappointment and his hugely successful business holds no challenge for him.

So the fact that he becomes friends with the aspiring youth is less surprising. Add a young British teacher to the mix, closer in age to Max but sharing more in common with Herman when it comes to sophistication, and the plot of the movie takes direction. Max and Herman are both overcome by a crush on the teacher, Miss Cross, but Herman wins her, and so the adventure begins.

In general, "Rushmore" is innovative and the character portrayal of Max is really quite superb, but overall the movie is strangely unbalanced. There are moments that are brilliant, but overall I felt as if the film was screaming for attention instead of just being entertaining. Certainly I enjoyed Max as director of the school plays and I loved the relationship between him and his father, Bert. Max at first lies about his father, wishing to make him more grand than the barber he is. But there are some genuine moments there that are not to be missed.

Maybe the imbalance of the film is a deliberate attempt to capture the awkward intensity of real teenagers. At times brilliant, at times stupid, and often out of control and unbelievable--"Rushmore" is all that.