Synopsis

College roommates Josh and Cooper discover an alleged academic loophole: if a roommate dies, the surviving student receives automatic straight A's. Facing academic failure and financial pressure, they search their campus for a vulnerable student to move in with them. Their scheme becomes increasingly reckless as each potential candidate brings unexpected complications, forcing the roommates to confront the consequences of treating despair as a shortcut to success.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film was produced through MTV Productions and released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on August 21, 1998.

• Principal photography took place from March 26 through May 30, 1997. The University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, stood in for the fictional Daleman College, with additional filming in Modesto and at the University of Southern California.

• The movie was made on an estimated $14 million budget and earned approximately $15.1 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters.

• The opening title sequence was created by Karin Fong and Adam Bluming of Imaginary Forces. It presents the credits as questions, answers, diagrams, and other elements of a standardized exam built around the film's morbid premise.

• The title designers also helped shape the sequence's music choices, using lyrics that create an intentionally ironic contrast with the dark academic subject matter.

• Mark Mothersbaugh composed the score, while the soundtrack album was released by DreamWorks Records on August 4, 1998.

• The film belongs to a late-1990s cycle of campus comedies that mixed youth-oriented humor with darker material, but its central premise was specifically based on the urban legend sometimes called "pass by catastrophe."