In Life Lessons 101, ‘With Honors’ Passes : <i> In “With Honors,” a driven Harvard government major and a homeless bum teach each other lessons about life after the bum finds the boy’s lost senior thesis and demands favors for its return. (Rated PG-13)</i>

From the previews he’d seen, Damien Munsinger, 16, expected “With Honors” to be a happy comedy. Boy, oh, boy, what a mistake.

“I didn’t expect it to be so . . . kind of a tear-jerker,” he said.

The privileged Monty, it turns out, was abandoned as a child by his father. The bum Simon, coincidentally, had abandoned his own wife and children decades earlier. Simon (played by Joe Pesci) is also dying of lung disease caused by breathing asbestos while working in a shipyard.

Simon is also said to suffer from alcoholism and perhaps schizophrenia but wins applause from an advanced class in government when he one-ups the stuffy professor and delivers a spontaneous lecture of his own.

Postgraduates who have spent some time in the real world will probably gag trying to swallow their disbelief at some plot and character development, not to mention the entire premise.

At a Sunday matinee in Newport Beach, usher Brian Goggins said many members of the older generation have come out of this movie shaking their heads and wondering why Monty didn’t just force Simon to give him back the thesis in the first place.

But kids older than 12 said they enjoyed the movie and its lessons in Moral Development I: Bums are people, too; you can learn more on the street than in an ivory tower university.

“We loved it,” said Monet Corso, 14, whose same-age friends Cynthia Miranda and Tiffany Long brought her after having seen it themselves the night before. “It made you laugh. It made you cry. . . .”

Interrupted Cynthia: “You sound like a commercial.”

Nevertheless, the girls agreed it was a nearly perfect show.

“You didn’t think it was sappy?” I asked.

“Not at all ,” they chorused.

Said Cynthia: “I thought Joe Pesci was really funny, and I liked his character.”

Added Monet, “He was intelligent.”

The line they remembered the most was his oft-repeated signature phrase, “Boy, oh, boy. Boy, oh, boy.”

Monet was also impressed with a poetic message Simon gave Monty when he returned his original thesis--parroted from his professor’s negative views on the decline of democracy and mistrust of the common man. “He told him not to take ideas second- and third-hand,” she said.

“I think they were trying to show you don’t need to study to learn things,” Tiffany said.

No wonder kids love this film.

Simon eventually moves in with Monty and his privileged housemates, affecting all their lives.

The girls particularly liked the only female housemate, Courtney, a snob played by Moira Kelly, who had a similar role in “The Cutting Edge,” another movie popular with the girls.

Sex, nudity and violence are all minimal in this movie. But until Courtney falls in love with the gentle Monty, she isn’t much of a role model, treating her boyfriends as condom-necessitating sex objects.

Some of the humor went over the girls’ heads and would surely bore younger kids.

Even though she enjoyed the film, Monet said, “I think older kids can relate to it more than we can.”

Cynthia agreed, saying: “My sister’s 18. She absolutely loved the movie. She’s in college, so she knew.”

Tiffany said she liked it even better the second time around. “You pick up on little parts you didn’t get at first. You can understand it more.”