Sometimes you just need to see a movie based on its title. Such is the case with Bickford Schmeckler’s Cool Ideas [siff]. Bickford (Patrick Fugit, from Almost Famous) inexplicably lives in the basement of a fraternity house. While his roommates get drunk and high in togas, Bickford sucks on lollipops and thinks really cool thoughts about a grand unification theory. When he finally joins the party, he emerges from his room in a sportcoat, thinking that “toga” was intended to be a state of mind.

While Bickford is giving the frat guys a rooftop lecture in metaphysics and cool ideas (quantum physics, mostly), a really stoned sorority girl (Olivia Wilde, Marissa’s lesbian crush on the O.C.) stumbles into his bedroom and finds that the metal notebook of meticulously-written ideas induces orgasmlike symptoms and a bit of kleptomania. In addition to being the hobby of a likable physics geek, writing the book provided an outlet for dealing with his mother’s untimely death; so waking up to find it stolen induces all sorts of existential anxiety for our hero.

This is a college caper comedy and of course the book finds its way around campus with unexpected consequences: from the sorority, to her tool of a boyfriend, to the campus nutcase, to the Dungeons and Dragons club. It’s all pretty cute and mostly funny. The guys from Reno 911 drop by as college security, Cheryl Hines plays a sexy physicist, and Matthew Lillard is the schizophrenic homeless guy whose scenes drain a little bit of life from the movie. All of this makes for a sweet and well-meaning if not necessarily groundbreaking comedy where characters have valuable lessons to be learned and personal growth to be achieved. Plus, Paul Allen is the executive producer, which is so head-scratchingly weird that it makes the film all the more watchable.

(Friday 02 June & Saturday 03 June)