Index > 20th anniversary: a bunch of movies that I watched in 2005, revisited > The Graduate
Posted by Billdude (@billdude) on March 5, 2026, 10:51 p.m.
1967: Ebert reviews the movie and gives it four stars for the reasons most people gave it four stars back then.
1997: Ebert re-reviews the film for its 30th anniversary, gives it 3 stars instead of 4 and says that Mrs. Robinson is sympathetic and Benjamin is a dork, and that he and the girl don’t really know each other and he’s going to get into “plastics” anyway.
2005: I watch the film all the way through for the first time and find myself wondering how anyone, even in 1967, would have ever thought the movie’s message was anything other than “Benjamin is a dork and doesn’t know what he’s doing and isn’t going to get anywhere.”
2020: I purchase the movie on Criterion and realize that the movie has a stacked deck–not only is it obvious that Benjamin is a dork and isn’t going to get anywhere, and that he and Elaine don’t really know each other, but that nobody whosoever in the entire movie does, or is going to do, ANYTHING to help Benjamin not turn out “plastic.” Mrs. Robinson is a failed posturing-intellectual souse who rejected studying art in order to enter a shitty marriage, and is going to do the same thing to her daughter, and so she doesn’t want Benjamin anywhere near her because then she wouldn’t get to do that. Ebert’s assertion that she’s the hero of the movie was ridiculous, one of the most wrong-headed things he ever wrote.
“He’s presented with reasonable choices and opportunities, and treats them like an attack on his soul. He stalks and harasses a woman he barely knows, ruins a marriage, and uses everyone around him.”
Reasonable choices? He’s going to get bored with his job and wife and turn to drink. That isn’t an attack on his soul? “ruins a marriage?” That marriage was already shot and it takes two to cheat.
That article could have been insightful, but instead it was just as stacked as the movie.
I like the movie but it’s more so because of how it fits into narratives about the 60s and New Hollywood than anything else. It’s not really a great “comedy,” it’s not like it really makes me laugh.
The most overrated movie of the Boomer Canon is The Last Picture Show.