Feel-Good Shut-In Movie Of The Day #17
The Freshman (1990)

You'd think even the great Marlon Brando would have trouble pulling off the Ninja trick of playing a fictional mobster who, according to the script, was the inspiration for the fictional mobster Brando played in "The Godfather." Yet, here he is in writer/director Andrew Bergman’s astonishingly inverted comedy, playing the role of Carmine “The Toucan” Sabatini perfectly straight — yet mining the part for subversive laughs from beginning to end. Matthew Broderick, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, is the perfect innocent who finds himself entangled in Sabatini’s comically nefarious plot, which seems to involve serving an endangered komodo dragon at a gala banquet. But just like everything else in "The Freshman," from Brando’s sendup of his most famous role to the poker-faced Feds on Sabatini’s trail, nothing is what it seems.