There is a difference between genius and an encyclopædic recall of trivia that the makers of HairBrained either fail to appreciate or failed to convey.
Overall, the movie is a reasonable diversion with a few humorous moments and decent performances by Brendan Fraser and Alex Wolff. Production values are on the level of a television program. Most of the shots are static with more motion from the jiggly-cam camera movement than the actors.
The plot is contrived. Wolff plays a thirteen-year-old genius who feels outcast but lacks the common sense to cut his comically exaggerated Afro that seems better suited to a Mel Brooks farce or one of the Police Academy films, and adds nothing to the narrative other than a raison d'être for a lame title that itself has little to do with the story. He looks and moves like a wannabe rock star, but his musical talents seem limited to playing a toy xylophone.
The greatest contrivance is the rule book for the competition, which includes harebrained rules that provide deus ex machina plot twists. The Whitman College team has an alternate contestant, whose presence facilitates two plot twists, while the Yale team has no alternate, which facilitates another deus ex machina plot twist.
The questions posed to the contestants more often seem drawn from trivia games than designed to assess intellectual acumen. Most are answered from memory by the contestants. A notable exception asks for the longest English word that can be played on a musical instrument. Several characters mouth words as they attempt to compute the response. But it seems hollow as it doesn't seem credible that they would be able to consider every possible permutation of seven letters that spell words.
Nothing in the movie seems quite real. We see the students doing homework, but never attending classes. We don't see any professors. Wolff's character is bullied, but not with any conviction. Brandon's character can pay full tuition, offer a thousand-dollar reward and purchase a commuter van, but he can't replace his decade-old car or even repair the soft top.
Other contrivances include the enrollment of a student known to Fraser's character and the handling of a bet.
The central love angle seems credible, but two other romantic subplots don't seem realistic. One involves an older student who aggressively pursues Wolff's character, only to inexplicably morph into a friend and confidant. The other involves Fraser's character breaking off a romance with a college student (played by an actress who looks to be in her mid or late twenties) because the inappropriate age differential seems weird.
The script is largely formulaic. There are mildly amusing moments, but the writers never push the envelope, except with a few homoerotic sight gags that seem more uncomfortable than funny.
The protagonists arrive at the conclusion through plot contrivances and regurgitation of knowledge they apparently had at the beginning of the film. The conflicts they overcome are largely internal, such as shyness and self-doubt. The moral seems to be something to the effect that personal victories don't require external validation. Whatever the film is about, it has nothing to do with being harebrained.
