Getting Straight

Muddled (and now dated) campus revolt comedy, distinguished by Elliott Gould's marvellously grizzly performance as an ageing dropout who decides to drop back in again, and resolutely keeps his nose glued to his books in self-defence. Robert Kaufman's script casts a nicely caustic eye not only on the juvenility of the student demands, but also on the hopeless desiccation of academia. Instead of following up, he opts for the easy way out, offering a kitschy metaphor - make love not protest - in a ridiculous scene where Gould strips off to do just that amid the flying fists of a campus riot. Rush's mannered direction is no help, but there are some very funny scenes, not least an oral in which Gould is driven into a corner like a caged lion by an examiner determined to make him admit, through a reinterpretation of The Great Gatsby, that Scott Fitzgerald was a closet homosexual.