I don't think she's right for you.

The first DVD I ever owned was Rushmore, that 1998 film starring Jason Schwartzman as Max Fischer and Bill Murray as Herman Blume. I remember thinking how cool and hi-tech it was that my new computer could function as a DVD player, and Rushmore was on sale, so I couldn’t resist. Still, nearly ten years later, Rushmore remains one of my favorites.

But what makes it so good? Perhaps the most distinct thing about Rushmore is that it has a central character who is a young adolescent, but who seems to have a talent for getting particular adults to treat him as an adult, to give him adult-like responsibilities and allow him to deal with R-rated material in the plays he writes and directs. After one play, which involved live gunfire and drug trade, Blume buys Max a whiskey at a fancy restaurant. And then there’s the irresistibly cool scene early in the film when Max expresses concern to his father that he’s spending too much time on extra-curricular activities and not enough time scoring chicks, which seems to Max to be all anyone cares about. You’re like one of those old clipper ship captains, Max’s father says, you’re married to the sea. Yes, Max replies, that’s true. But I’ve been out to sea for a long time. During this brief exchange, Max and his father stop just outside the door to their modest home, as though the dialogue were so important that it demanded their undivided attention, and as though Max had been a bachelor for decades.

The perfect compliment to Max’s teen precociousness is Herman Blume, a rich industrialist who often acts like a teenager. For instance, both Blume and Max have a crush on Ms. Cross, a teacher at Rushmore. Blume uses his cell phone to call Max and tell him that he doesn’t think Ms. Cross is that great and that she’s not right for Max. At the same time, he’s sneaking through the school grounds to peak at Ms. Cross through her schoolroom window. On his way, he speeds up momentarily so as to cross the basketball court just in time to reject a small child who’s taking a shot. There’s something wildly amusing about the sight of a grown man in a suit seriously rejecting a little kid back into what would be about the fifth row if it were an arena rather than a school playground. And of course, this is Bridger’s favorite moment of the film, and he likes to say “I don’t think she’s right for you” before breaking up passes on the ultimate field.

Along with Blume and Max comes an amazing cast of rad minor characters. There’s Margaret Yang, a role played by Sara Tanaka before her infamous role as Megan Huang in Old School. She’s just as precocious as Max, but cute and savvy to the ways of the public school where Max finds himself after being expelled from Rushmore. She flies a remote controlled plane and acts in one of Max’s plays. There’s Dirk Calloway, Max’s much younger best friend whose mom is rather hot, which generated the rumor that Max picked Dirk as a chapel partner simply to get a piece from Dirk’s mom in her Jaguar. And who could forget Mr. LittleJeans, the Rushmore groundskeeper who laughs in the most creepy and hysterical way at the end of Max’s play at the public school. All of these characters and others give life to Rushmore’s bizarre setting.

I suppose that what it comes down to is that Rushmore is funny, but not laugh-out-loud funny. It’s more like amusingly absurd; for that reason, it’s precisely the sort of movie I’d like.