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The Freshman Review: Marlon Brando's performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather is one of the most memorable in cinema history, and the actor's bravely pays homage to the part in writer-director Andrew Bergman's screwball comedy The Freshman. Brando runs away with the movie, and deservedly so: he delivers an astonishing, perfectly controlled comic performance. Bergman commandingly sends up Corleone and stages a number of other satiric moments, but despite being goofy and sloppy at times, the movie never becomes a spoof. The affable performances of Brando, Matthew Broderick, Paul Benedict and Bruno Kirby (who appeared in The Godfather Part II) sustain The Freshman's genial air. Gangster movies were a favorite revisionist target of such mid-1980s films as Prizzi's Honor and Married to the Mob; the closest match-up to Brando's work in the The Freshman, however, might be Robert De Niro's self-referential performance in 1999's Analyze This. Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide

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