| Director | Mike Million |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy film |
| Runtime | 89 min |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $5 million |
| Box office | $5 million |
Charlie Thurber (Luke Wilson) is a beleaguered English professor at fictional Grey College (a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania) who competes for tenure against an impressive new hire from Yale, Elaine Grasso (Gretchen Mol). Jay Hadley (David Koechner) is an anthropology professor at Grey who tries to convince Thurber to sabotage Grasso's career – while being simultaneously obsessed with trying to prove the authenticity of Bigfoot. Thurber's articles are rejected by a series of academic journals and he worries about becoming a victim of the "publish or perish" pressures of professorship. Despite competing for the same job, Thurber and Grasso begin developing a friendship after she flounders as a classroom teacher and asks him for advice.
Meanwhile, Thurber struggles with a series of personal problems: his sister, Margarette Sasha Alexander), pesters him for money to pay for the retirement home of their father, William (Bob Gunton); a smitten female student, Blaire, is pressingly flirtatious; and rather than admit he's single, Thurber hires Beth (Rosemarie DeWitt), a woman of questionable sanity, to act as his girlfriend for a dinner with Grasso and her snobbish boyfriend Warren (Andrew Daly).
Thurber's tenure review with college officials seems to heading for a disaster until the dean casts a tie-breaking vote, noting that Thurber's students gave him exemplary reviews and clearly adore him. Thurber is offered probational tenure, with the caveat that his classroom teaching will be severely reduced so that he can devote more time to publishing in respectable academic outlets.
The film concludes with Thurber inviting his ailing father to move in with him and throwing a party at his home, where he learns that Grasso has broken up with her boyfriend, hinting that she would like to pursue a relationship with Thurber. In a final scene, we see Thurber in a high school classroom. Having left academia, Thurber has chosen to focus on his teaching and his students.