You are scum! You are filth! Your a degenerate!

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2008)

***SPOILERS*** Even though it ended up becoming one of the biggest movie hits of all times "The Graduate" had trouble getting any of the major Hollywood studios to distribute it! With them feeling that it's story was either too spicy or it's cast with with exception of Anne Bancroft, as Mrs. Robinson, too unknown to make the film profitable. As it turned out the 3 million dollars it took to make the movie ended up cashing in some 200 million, in the USA and aboard, for the almost unknown Embessy Pictures who took the chance in distributing it.
After graduating with honors, as the debating team captain and top track and field star, from collage Ben Braddock, Dustin Hoffman,had the world at his feet with a bright future ahead of him. What turned out to be Ben's insecurity in his shyness in making friends with the opposite sex that soon ended up turning into a nightmare for him. Long time family friend Mrs. Robinson seeing the young man at a coming home reception set her sights on him in both deflowering Ben and making him her both secret lover and personal sex toy.
Tricking Ben to drive her home Mrs. Robinson gets the confused and shy collage boy all alone! She then starts to both flirt and disrobe, doing a very sexy and provocative strip tease right in front of the shocked and startled young man. At first resisting Mrs. Robinson's advances Ben soon gives into them having a wild and illicit affair with her. It's when Mrs. Robinson's 20 year old daughter Elaine, Katherine Ross, came home from collage on the East Coast that this cozy relationship between Ben and Mrs. Robinson starts to fall apart. In that even though Mrs. Robinson felt nothing wrong with her, a married woman, having an affair with Ben she at the same time was outraged that he would end up very possibly doing the very same thing with her both single and available daughter Elaine!
Even though at first Ben is anything but interested in Elaine the fact that he was matched up with her by both his parents and the unsuspecting Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilion), who was unaware that Ben was having an affair with his wife, Mrs. Robinson turned both vicious and vindictive towards the by now emotionally destroyed Ben Braddock!
As much as he tires to avoid it Ben falls in love with Elaine but when Mrs. Robinson threatens to expose his relationship with her Ben, what I think stupidly, beats her to the punch! It's with Ben confessing that he once was "making it" with her mom that Elaine, who at first was in love with him, throws him out of her, the Robinson residence, house and cuts Ben out of her life forever!
Even tough it was the best part of the movie Ben's attempt to win Elaine back never seemed to ring true. Instead of the sensitive and feeling person that he was at the beginning of the film Ben turned out to be a down right and, for the most part, unfeeling jerk in the end.
Hounding Elaine all throughout the city of San Francisco, that he traveled to from his home in L.A, where she was enrolled in Berkley Collage a hot bed for student activation Ben both insulated and humiliated Elaine at every opportunity. It was when Ben found out that Elaine had a boyfriend medical student Carl Smith, Brian Avery, that he really went to work on her. Ben soon gets under Elaine's skin by him gleefully taunting her in public, in the Berkley Collage Library, about when she first made it with Carl. This has Elaine leaving the sneering and nosy jerk in a rush and in tears! It made you wonder why Elaine would have anything to do with Ben again but amazingly she did!
***SPOILER ALERT*** Despite the films many shortcomings in it trying to make Ben Braddock a hero or just plain nice guy the outrageous actions of Ms. Robinson more then made you forget as well as overlook Ben's hurtful actions, towards Elaine, in it. The by now legendary and unforgettable ending at Elaine and Carl's wedding ceremony has Ben snatch Elaine just moments after she and Carl took their wedding vows. You wonder why Elaine was so happy to at first become Carl's wife and then, on a dime, decide to leave him for an almost insane and hysterically acting Ben! As unsound and unrealistic as both Ben and Elaine's actions at the very end of the movie were they still made a hell of a happy ending!