Tenure

**1/2 - This lightweight 2009 comedy starring Luke Wilson goes for a sort of Wes Anderson vibe but isn’t entirely successful. It has quirky characters, low-key comedic elements, an unusual score and a soundtrack full of indie-folk songs and slight keyboard/guitar noodling. However, it lacks the punch of an Anderson-made film (even his less than stellar recent effort “The Darjeeling Limited”) in that it doesn’t have the detail, artfulness or eccentricities that tend to make his movies so charming and sometimes hilarious. “Tenure” follows the story of Wilson as a professor at a small-time college in Pennsylvania who, despite being loved by all of his students, can’t get any of his work published and is having a difficult time achieving the desired status of tenured. Meanwhile, a new professor from Yale is hired as direct competition and Wilson and his overweight, bald, Oakley-wearing colleague played by David Koechner try to sabotage her career. There are subplots about his sister and his father and lots of jokes about horny old people and erectile dysfunction, but there’s really not much going on, and it ends up being pretty rigidly formulaic in the end. First-time writer/director Michael Million does a decent enough job in his dual role as his writing has some humor to it and his direction gets the job done. There is just nothing that really makes this stand out as anything better than average in its looks and the plot is about as mechanical as one is liable to find without it being extremely irritating. It’s not without its charm, and seems to have a decent message to it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it.