Movie Review: Higher Learning

“How many people came here to change the world? How many people came here to learn how to make a lot of money?” Sounds like the typical first-day-of-college spiel address to the incoming class of freshman students who have many things on their minds other than the academics. However, for the students attending Columbus University, making money soon becomes the least of their worries as they are thrown into social situations where they must face real world violence, racism, and hatred.

The film, Higher Learning, directed by John Singleton, begins with a rally of students and a speech from an authoritative figure encouraging the students to fulfill their potential. The camera pans across the crowd to briefly introduce the main characters including Malik (Omar Epps), Kristen (Kristy Swanson), and Remy (Michael Rapaport). Each of these students has a goal to obtain an academic education, but throughout the movie each learns a hard lesson in life. While Kristen finds herself in the midst of a rape situation, Malik is struggling to balance his academics and athletics, and Remy has no social group to fit into until a group of Nazis take him in and make him feel at home.

The opening scene caught my attention because it reminded me of a familiar situation I was in a mere two months ago when I arrived to Penn State for the first time and President Rodney Erickson gave us, as a freshman class, a welcome speech much like the one in the beginning of the movie. As a college student, I felt a connection to the characters because I could understand some of the stress they were feeling with school work piling up and having to balance different aspects of college life.

With that being said, a great college movie must consist of characters that can relate to the audience, meaning college students. This was achieved because each of the characters in the movie fit into a different stereotype or “clique,” so many college students can relate to the feeling of fitting in or oppositely, not being able to find their group of friends.

A successful college film must also have a plot with issues that college students actually face. Unfortunately, rape, violence, drinking and fitting in are topics that most college students are faced with or know someone who faces these issues. By having a plot that is not to elementary or too adult, this movie brings about issues that college students are most likely to relate to. By doing this, the movie captures and successfully holds the attention of their audience.

One scene in the film that was especially relatable was towards the beginning when Kristen was invited to a party, drank a little too much, and ended up walking home to a boy’s frat house where they began to make out and things spiraled out of control. Kristen was raped by that boy who she thought she trusted, which, sadly happens all too often on college campuses.

The characters in this movie went to college thinking they wouldn't be learning anything more than just math and physics, but soon realized the had deeper issues in life to learn about. Overall, the students were constantly facing struggles and situations where they were forced to learn about themselves in a way that may have been uncomfortable for them, but turned out to be positive in the long run.

Although the main audience is college students, any moviegoer who is interested in learning a lesson outside of their own issues would be a perfect candidate to see this movie. Filled with dramatic, tense scenes to violent, heartbreaking scenes this movie will appeal to many audiences.

Through all the violence, discrimination, and segregation brought up in the movie, the film ends on a somewhat ironic note. The last song being the National Anthem, which suggests that even through all the issues that these students encountered they, and we as an audience, all can relate to one another in a common struggle to engage in a higher learning.