Hair Brained(2013)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

After Eli (Alex Wolff) and his Whittman Warring Hares teammates – Romeo (Robin de Jesus), Alan (Teddy Bergman), and Gertrude (Greta Lee) – defeat Princeton University to advance to the Final Four event of the Collegiate Mastermind National Competition, Eli breaks out his mock karate moves in celebration like he usually does every time his team is victorious. However, this time, he performs his moves more exuberantly, and the moderator quickly comes to consider this to be a violation of the competition’s code of conduct and informs the committee about it. The committee agrees with him, and they send Eli a letter informing him – much to his disbelief and anger – that he is suspended from participating in the semi-final round for “actions unbecoming an athlete,” and he also can’t even be in the building that the Final Four event will be held in until after the semi-finals conclude. Shortly after receiving his letter, he gets into an argument with his new girlfriend, Shauna (Julia Garner), and they stop seeing each other. The news of Eli’s suspension spreads all around Whittman College, but when his bully, Laird (Michael Oberholtzer) – who has been softening up to him after his team’s repeated victories – enters his dorm room and complains about this to him, Eli tells him that the suspension is just a ruse to lull their semi-final opponent into a false sense of security, and no one knows about this but them. On the day before the Final Four event, Eli tries to motivate the rest of the Warring Hares into thinking that they can win the title without him, but they have zero confidence in themselves, a feeling reinforced by the fact that Eli has carried the team all the way to where they are now.

Meanwhile, Leo (Brendan Fraser) runs into his estranged daughter, Sophie (Lizzy DeClement), while she is on a tour of the campus. After informing her that he is her biological father and then lying to her by saying that he is a professor here, she quickly becomes enraged, both because he left her ten years ago and because he is a professor at her top college choice. She furiously accuses him of ruining her life all over again and then storms off. Some days later, Leo finds her sitting in his car, so he decides to sit in it with her and have a chat with her. He admits to her that he isn’t really a professor here, but she replies that she knows this, and then she tells him that, though she hated him at first, she doesn’t anymore because she has now seen how much of a lost goofball he is. Leo soon asks her if she can afford to attend this college, and after she replies that she can’t, he tells her that maybe he can do something for her to help her out tuition-wise. Therefore, on the day before the Final Four event, Leo pays a visit to his old bookie, Benny (Fred Melamed), and – thinking that the Warring Hares don’t stand a chance without Eli – he bets $25,000 that Harvard College will win the championship, hoping that the $50,000 he could win will cover all of Sophie’s tuition costs.

Just before the semi-finals begin at the Poughkeepsie Music Hall in Poughkeepsie, New York, Eli tries to get into the building as a spectator by going into the lobby to purchase a ticket, but the booth closes just as he reaches it. Moments later, Shauna appears before him, and after each apologizes to the other for how they earlier acted towards each other, they share a kiss. The Warring Hares then gets a lucky break when their opponents, Stanford University, fail to appear in time for their match due to them getting trapped in their hotel’s elevator when it experiences a sudden power outage, which results in them getting disqualified and the Warring Hares getting sent to the finals, where they will be taking on Harvard for the championship. As Eli, Leo, Shauna, and the rest of the Warring Hares are having lunch at a diner afterwards, Eli goes to the bar to order some pie for himself and Shauna, but before he can place his order, a dapper elderly man who has been watching Eli over the last couple of rounds of the tournament comes up to him and shows him a tattoo that he has on his wrist that identifies him as a member of Harvard’s Porcellian Club. Knowing of Eli’s desire to attend Harvard, the old man promises him that he will get him admission into Harvard on a full scholarship if he takes a dive in the final match.

The next day, Eli tells Leo and Shauna about the old man’s offer and how he hasn’t come to a decision on it yet (due to how conflicted he feels about it), then he wanders off for elsewhere to try to calm his mind. Later, Leo and Shauna enter the Warring Hares’ dressing room and see that Eli is not there with the others, so they take off to find him. His teammates are forced to take the stage without him, and they waste no time in lagging behind Harvard on the scoreboard. Leo and Shauna eventually locate Eli in the children’s playroom of the music hall which has a TV airing the final match, and he tells them that he isn’t going to leave it because he has opted to go to Harvard. Around this time, his team starts to rebound and raise their score by digging deep within themselves and using their own combined intelligence, but just as the final two minutes approach, Alan passes out and busts his head open on his team’s podium in the process, having become completely overwhelmed by his need to use the toilet out of major anxiety. The moderator tells the Warring Hares that they have three minutes to produce an alternate, and Shauna implores Eli to be that alternate so his team doesn’t get disqualified, but Leo tries to persuade him to go for Harvard, thinking about the bet he made with Benny. After Shauna asks Eli if he wants to screw over his school, his team, and his friends to get into Harvard, she tells him to grow a pair and go out there and win the competition, and this sways Eli into making the decision to help his team. Just after Eli goes out onto the stage, Leo calls Benny and tells him that he wants to take back his bet, but Benny informs him that he never put his bet through to begin with, having no desire to see him ruin his life all over again. Eli’s teammates manage to tie the score with Harvard by the time the final question is upon them, and when it is asked, Romeo buzzes in, but neither he nor Gertrude know the answer to it. They beg Eli to give them the answer, and after much hesitation, Eli provides it to them and they say it together. Their answer proves to be correct, winning the championship for Whittman College, and as Eli and the others celebrate, Gertrude kisses Romeo. However, refusing to accept defeat, one of the members of the Harvard team instructs one of his teammates to go to the league office and tell them that they are getting the shaft, hoping that they can find and exploit a rule that will reverse the decision.

As the Warring Hares, their supporters, Shauna, and Leo are continuing the celebration in their dressing room, the moderator comes in and informs them that the Harvard team has enlightened the league office to a rule in the Collegiate Mastermind rulebook that states that, in the event that a player gets injured with less than one minute remaining in a match, their team cannot replace them with another player; the match must be completed with two players on each team. Since the Warring Hares have unwittingly broken this rule, this means that they are now disqualified and Harvard has won the competition by default. After the moderator leaves the room, Eli tells everyone that they won fair and square, but Harvard stole their victory from them, and they did it because they fear them. He then tells everyone that they are the people’s champions, and they all smile at this. However, Laird winds up stealing the trophy without anyone’s knowledge.

One day, Eli and Shauna head up to Eli’s room, and they find a note from Leo attached to the front door asking him to look him up if he ever comes to Fort Lauderdale. They then enter his room and find it cleared of all his belongings before looking out the window and seeing him packing his stuff into his car. They rush down to see him, and he explains that he is dropping out of college and moving to Fort Lauderdale, where he intends to find a job so he can pay for Sophie’s education as well as find a woman his own age to have sexual relations with (he had earlier ended a sexual relationship with Camilla [Josefina Scaglione], a student who was about half his age). Eli and Shauna hug him goodbye, and before he drives away, he tells Eli to cut his hair. As they walk off for elsewhere, Shauna begs Eli not to cut his hair, but he tells her that he has no intention of doing so because “it protects (his) brain.”

The movie ends with Leo crossing paths with Eli’s mother, Sheila (Parker Posey), in a general store (though he doesn’t know that she is his mother). He develops an immediate attraction to her, then takes a few boxes of condoms and goes after her.