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Lizards in Movies   The Freshman (1990)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a movie that stars Marlon Brando as a mobster and Matthew Broderick as a film school student who accepts a job working for him. It opens with a close shot of a large egg on which we see the title of the film. As the credits roll, the camera pulls back and we see the egg crack and a monitor lizard emerge. A large monitor lizard plays a huge part in this movie. It seems to get as much screen time as Marlon Brando, certainly more than any other lizard in a feature film that I know of. I'm not sure what species it really is, but we're supposed to believe that it's an endangered Kamodo Dragon that was smuggled into New Jersey to be served at a restaurant "Gormet Club" where every 3 - 6 months they serve a dinner for a minimum of $200,000 per plate, with the menu consisting entirely of endangered species. (Talk about the extravagances of the 1%...) They figure the dragon will go for $350,000 a plate, served off the bone in a cream basil sauce, for a total of 60 servings totalling $20,000,000. That has to be the most expensive lizard ever. Matthew Broderick moves to New Jersey to go to film school at New York University when he is immediately robbed. He finds the robber, who takes him to meet notorious mobster Carmine Sabatini, played by Marlon Brando. Brando likes Broderick and hires him to go to a warehouse to pick up the Kamodo Dragon. In a long comic sequence, Broderick and another guy take the lizard on a leash and put it into the car and put a seat belt on it. When they stop at a gas station it gets loose, runs through a parking lot, rides up a glass elevator and ends up in a shopping a mall, where it terrifies the shoppers, rides a treadmill and finally swims in a children's pool before the two guys capture it, smuggle it out of the mall, and finally deliver it to the Gourmet Club. After a lot of drama involving Federal agents who are trying to catch Brando by using Broderick, we see the lizard again as the chefs of the restaurant wheel it alive around the restaurant so the diners can see what they'll be eating before it is slaughtered and cooked. I'm happy to say that never happens, but I won't spoil the rest. A real live monitor lizard (or probably more than one) is used in the movie, and congratulations go to the animal wranglers because it couldn't have been easy dealing with such a large feisty animal.