The beginning of "Rushmore" is like a grade-school yearbook, with the pages coming alive with Max Fischer's after-school schedule. It's a splendid montage of his many hobbies, all different as night is from day. Max (Jason Schwartzman) shoots clay pigeons on the school lawn and smokes bees from their wooden hives. Then, Max drops the bee-keeper's garb, puts on his flight scarf and goggles and goes buzzing around in his piper cub.

When he's done logging hours on the single engine prop, he goes back to the theatre and trains his young thespians on the skills of acting. This isn't typical teenage acting. This isn't a high-school rendition of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." It's "Serpico" on stage. It's coke busts for a live audience of wide-eyed 5-year-olds.

Thus unfolds "Rushmore" and so goes Max's story, putting hands in every pocket and fearlessly treading where other boys his age would never dream of going.

The opening sequence is a nutshell reminder of the film's countless ideas. Just as Max has his wish list of ridiculous goals and professions, "Rushmore" is a breeding ground of creative impulses.

The film's director and co-writer, Wes Anderson, is a master of life's eccentric ideas, assembling them all in a loosely wrapped film. Anderson laces "Rushmore" with unexpected relationships, peculiar actors and outfits from other dimensions. The lasting effect is a movie that has its very own tone. Seemingly ripped from the pages of a child's coloring book, "Rushmore" is its own off-balanced universe.

This is a land where people are people and ages are of little consequence. The social cliques cross the age barrier, and Max's triangle soon attracts the likes of Herman Blume (Bill Murray), a steel magnate many years Max's elder.

It's a collision of generations as both boy and man are trying to capture either their missing youth or an elusive adulthood. Suddenly, a steal tycoon is no longer hobnobbing with other magnates; he's transported back to his younger years and becomes pals with a teenager.

While Margaret Yang is a young rose ready to be plucked, Max deludes himself with a higher prize: a school teacher twice his age. Max deserves credit for his ambitious plans, but he aims a bit high with the courtship of Miss Cross (Olivia Williams). The way in which Max falls for an older woman, or the way Mr. Blume becomes the courier of love-notes, is one of the film's many charms. Both characters are reaching for either an age in the future or one that has long since past.

The images of "Rushmore" are an ode to these relationships between young and old. During Max's production of "Serpico," the audience is a bizarre composite of kids and adults. Mr. Blume watches attentively, sandwiched between two palm-sized youngsters watching in awe. It's a quirky image and a true testament to the movie's merging of generations.

Anderson has the gift of "people vision," meaning he finds the non-acting gems and sprinkles them through his films. Instead of browsing Hollywood's list of character actors, Anderson picks everyday people to play the crucial bit roles. While Max Fischer and Mr. Blume may be in the foreground, it's the background cast that completes the richness of the "Rushmore" universe.

Kumar Pallana is most likely not a trained actor, but he plays Mr. Littlejeans to near perfection. Kumar's look is a tribute to the world's variety of people: he's a Native American man with faded brown skin and a mop of gray hair atop his head. As Mr. Littlejeans, Pallana need only be himself and act content in "Rushmore's" landscape genius.

While groundskeeping may not be central to the film, Kumar's contribution is unforgettable as he quietly rakes leaves, falls asleep during plays or blends into the background, playing with rope. He ends his part on a beautiful final note: The basketball coach asks, "What did you think of the play, Mr. Littlejeans?"

He replies short and sweetly, "Best play ever, man."

While Kumar Pallana makes wonderful acting strides, he is narrowly overshadowed by an individual who remains nameless. The anonymous individual says nothing and does nothing, but his memorable face is an ornament of nearly every frame. Look closely at Anderson's mise-en-scene to find a boy with sunken eyes and a sickly face. He's the skinny youngster who's first introduced when Magnus, the Scottish brute, sticks the boy with a poison-tipped dart. The dart pricks the boy's neck and he jerks his head in pain. From here on out, the child is a well-placed motif, popping up now and again, wearing dinosaur hats.

The boy's greatest moment is alongside Herman Blume's relaxing cocktail next to the emerald green pool. Herman lounges back with an icy bourbon and a cigarette dangling from his lips as he blindly tosses golfballs into the pool. The young boy, clad only in a Speedo, sneaks into the frame like an enemy spy and plucks a golf ball from the bucket. His fingers wrap the ball and he patters away. It's impossible to pinpoint exactly what this young boy means and why he inhabits a majority of the film but his presence does something for "Rushmore."

Together, the youngster and Kumar are non-acting delegates thrust into acting roles. Their inexperience puts Anderson's world off-balance.

Anderson has the knack of finding interesting folks with the quirky idiosyncrasies that make his universe a bit left of center. Whether it be an aging Native American with a belly-aching laugh or a young child that looks like a starving gerbil, both have a peculiar look and body language that informs the movie's oddball tone.

Sometimes all a scene needs is a hat or a cape to bolster its regularity into a quirky masterpiece. Dirk Calloway's purple Halloween suit is a brilliant wizard's wardrobe that would make Merlin jealous.

Little Dirk prances around the courtyard with a magical hat that stands no less than nine feet tall. Alongside Dirk, other students run incognito, some dressed as goblins and others posing as Long John Silver.

They ambush Max with rotting squirrel turds and sneak from tree to tree, dressed only in costume. The scene is made by these young tykes of all ages dressed as ghouls and wizards because, without the festive outfits, it would just be playground nonsense. Instead, Anderson takes Merlin hats and creepy masks, and makes this standard ambush a surreal Halloween sneak attack. There's something bizarre about Max walking carefree into a courtyard only to have a young Merlin leap out from behind a tree, casting spells.

Anderson has the special gift of finding life's tiny ideas that fall through the cracks. Whether it be a cone-shaped Merlin hat or the emaciated face of a pre-pubescent boy, there's something special in everything.

Like its opening image of Max Fischer, founder of the bombardment society, "Rushmore" is the innovator of small and quirky concepts.

--Movie Feature

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