REVIEW: Heart of Stone (A)

I've been convinced ever since my experience teaching in a low-income neighborhood that as civil servants, public school teachers are among the most underpaid and unappreciated workers in American society. Here are millions of adults providing millions of children with the skills and knowledge to succeed (and not simply survive) in the future, and they're paid beans. After watching Beth Toni Kruvant's Heart of Stone, I was reminded that many school administrators deserve higher pay as well, and, in the case of principals like Ron Stone, maybe also a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Heart of Stone is a riveting, refreshing, heartbreaking but ultimately inspiring documentary that will forever change your impressions of public schools in America. You think you've seen this story before, recently in The Class, or earlier in Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, and even High School High. In fact, with a bald African-American principal trying to clean up a formerly prestigious high school in inner-city New Jersey that's been overrun by gang violence, Heart of Stone would appear to be the documentary version of Lean on Me. But it's not. For starters, Ron Stone is the antithesis of Joe Clark. He's unconventional and a rebel, perhaps, but a warmhearted and compassionate rebel, and someone who understands that walking around with a baseball bat doesn't mean much when students are walking around with loaded Uzis.

Wearing a bullet-proof vest as he patrols the grounds of Weequahic High School, Stone is fearless in his interactions with the Crips and Bloods that make up his student body, visiting them at their homes and bringing them into his office on a regular basis for conversations about life. Stone explains, "The school has to be the parent, it has to be the psychologist, it has to be the police, it has to be all these things that, at one time, were the responsibilities of the family."

Indeed, having served in his position only a few years, Stone (who grew up in Newark) understands the harsh truth that many inner-city educators try to work around: "If I expect you to come in here and learn geometry and you say to me, 'But i don't have anywhere to live', how realistic is that? If you say to me, 'Mr. Stone, I can't carry books home, because I gotta have my hands in my pocket, because my hand is on whatever my protection is gonna be, because I have to cross two turflines to get home, how can I say, 'Yeah, well that's fine, but where's your geometry homework? See, unless I can address these needs that the kids have, I have no credibility with them."

And that's just what he does, examining each student's individual situations and then doggedly addressing every obstacle that prevents them from achieving their true potential.

Heart of Stone packs loads of rich history and insight into its trim, 84-minute running time. Utilizing a refreshingly conventional, interview-heavy documentary filmmaking method that's almost quaint in this age of Michael Moore, Man on Wire, and The Cove, Kruvant focuses her lens on Stone, three gang members, and the Jewish community. You might wonder why so much attention is paid to the community as a whole and the history of the high school - until you learn that Weequahic was once considered one of, if not the, best high schools in the nation. Alumni from the 50's and 60's, including Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Roth and American Gangster muse Richie Roberts (portrayed in the film by Russell Crowe), describe the school as a place full of promise and potential, from which you could attend any college and achieve any dream.

Following the racial turmoil and riots of the late 1960's, however, Newark - and consequently Weequahic - suffered a slow and unabated decline in socioeconomic status. Eventually gang violence was even spilling onto the school grounds, where a police officer was shot and killed by a gang member several years ago. Despite this tarnished image, Weequahic alumni, many of whom were Jewish and members of the classes of the 50's and 60's, decide to band together and form the Weequahic Alumni Association.

In doing so, and motivated by their self-imposed obligation to give back to the school that paved the way for their future success, these predominantly Jewish alumni committed to helping predominantly African-American students achieve similar dreams at Weequahic, going so far as to raise thousands of dollars in scholarship funds and sponsor trips to Europe (Stone: "It allows a kid to see there's a world out there so vastly different - and I hope that that stimulates something in you that allows you to think, you know, 'I could see doing this again, I want to do this again, how do I make it happen so I can do this again?'.").

On one level, then, Heart of Stone poses an extremely challenging question: What, if anything, do you owe to the public school that educated you, and to what extent should you - and not the state or school district - be responsible for helping its current students succeed? If you believe that any student has the potential to succeed under the right circumstances, as I do, then it's hard not to celebrate the Weequahic Alumni Association's efforts and hope that they encourage other schools and communities to follow suit. It would be nice to have a visionary hero like Ron Stone to manage the school on a day-to-day basis, but Heart of Stone shows that a public school with an alumni association as active and philanthropic as a private school can probably achieve some surprising success on its own.

In addition to focusing on what needs to go on in the community outside of the school to make a difference, Heart of Stone also provides vivid examples of what can happen when the community inside the school is transformed. Establishing fair rules and introducing conflict resolution seminars, Stone turned Weequahic into a non-violent space and became a mentor to several students along the way, including seniors Rayvon and Sharif (18 year-old gang leaders in the Crips and Bloods, respectively), who are, depending on the day, both ashamed and proud of their gang affiliations.

Rayvon is an intelligent, soft-spoken, contemplative young man who was raised in foster homes and joined the Crips if for no other reason than to experience "family" life for the first time. He likes to read and has hopes for leaving Newark, but when he is accepted to Seton Hall University, he is paralyzed by the thought of leaving the familiarity of his surroundings, regardless of how dangerous they may be. Sharif, on the other side of the turf line, is a larger-than-life, charismatic presence with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye. He and his brother are both influential leaders in the Bloods, and Sharif understands the value of education, even if he doesn't fully understand the value of life. His helpless mother appears to get some strange pride out her sons' leadership ability, even if it is exercised within one of the deadliest gangs in America.

It's outrageous to consider, but in listening to these young men you begin to develop some respect for them as well, if not at least some sympathy. The more you learn about the community and the more you learn about their families, the more you start to see them like Ron Stone does, not as gang members or problem students, but as confused kids with a lot of potential to do a lot of great things. If you are similarly engaged by this film, I will warn you of a development that literally caused me to gasp aloud, and left my fiancee and I emotionally wrecked for the rest of the night.

Critics of public schools - and there are legion - will throw out the baby with the bathwater here, pointing to the millions of high school dropouts and failed institutions that aren't seen in Heart of Stone. There's no denying this reality, but the message of this film is not that school reform can be achieved by pie-in-the-sky dreams and happy classes. Obviously, it takes a lot of hard work, sacrifice, discipline, gratitude, humility, forgiveness, and determination to turn schools around. But as evidenced by Ron Stone and Weequahic High School, optimism and compassion go a long way as well.

Grade:
Writing - N/A
Acting - N/A
Production - 10
Emotional Impact - 10
Music - 4
Social Significance - 5

Total: 29/30= 97% = A

Heart of Stone is currently playing in limited theatrical release. Visit the official website for screening information.

CDtZ: School of Rock (2003)

[Note: This is a submission for Counting Down the Zeroes, a brilliant, year-long project headed up by Film for the Soul's ambitious chief, Ibetolis. By the end of this year it will exist as a comprehensive collection of the best movies of the decade (2000's). My first submission was Boiler Room (2000), and I look forward to taking on more in the upcoming months. Check it out!]

Jack Black just has one of those faces, doesn't he? The kind that you see once and never forget, that can exhibit every range of human emotion, and that can believably slip into any supporting role in any genre of movie - Demolition Man, Waterworld, The Neverending Story III, Dead Man Walking, The Cable Guy, Enemy of the State, High Fidelity, Saving Silverman, Orange County. This fact shouldn't be a surprise, but yet it is: Jack Black had a solid 50 acting roles under his belt before his career-making turn as Dewey Finn in School of Rock.

Prior to Richard Linklater's sleeper smash hit, Black's biggest starring turn had been opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the underrated Farrelly Brothers rom-com Shallow Hal, where he demonstrated for the first time that he could play the straight guy for a whole movie, without even one air-guitar foray or memorably wacky scene. Ironically, it was probably during this time in Black's life (the early 2000's) that he lived in the same apartment building as Mike White, who wrote Orange County and was inspired to write School of Rock after frequently witnessing Black blast classic rock music and run through the halls naked.

High Fidelity director Stephen Frears was originally tapped to direct, but the job ultimately went to Linklater, who had the slacker movie cred (Slacker, Dazed and Confused) but had never made a film as "kid-friendly" as School of Rock (he would go on to make a poorly received Bad News Bears remake two years later). The film opened in the U.S. on October 3, 2003, less than a month after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.

I remember seeing it with a friend on opening weekend at Universal City in L.A., then a few weeks later again with friends in San Diego, and then a few weeks later again with my brother and sister in Minnesota (ah, the Roseville 4). A crowd-pleaser that never tired, School of Rock was the first movie I saw three times in the theater since Jurassic Park a decade earlier. Maybe in part thanks to my efforts, School of Rock remained in theaters for almost 6 months, grossing more than $80 million on an estimated budget of only $35 million. In the Chicago Tribune, Mark Caro perfectly summed it up: "The movie is the cinematic equivalent of a near-perfect three-minute pop song. It makes you laugh, smile and tap your toes over a brisk 88 minutes, and when it's finished, you're ready to hit repeat."

What makes this movie so enjoyable through repeated viewings? It's hard to narrow it down to just one or two aspects, but each time I see it the answer becomes more clear: Jack Black's performance and Mike White's screenplay. Without either of these two elements, the movie would suffer considerably, despite the sure-handed direction of Linklater and some great performances from the kids, Joan Cusack, and even Mike White himself as Jack Black's roommate.

When we see Black (or more likely a stunt man) take a stage dive onto an empty floor during the opening credits, we get a pretty good idea of the kind of energetic comedy in store for us. As Dewey Finn, Black fully commits to the role of a sensitive slacker with a passion for music so pure that it overshadows otherwise sacred values (until he discovers the students' musical talent, he's happy enough to completely waste their educational time). In his 3 1/2-star review, Roger Ebert observed, "Jack Black remains true to his irascible character all the way through; he makes Dewey's personality not a plot gimmick, but a way of life."

Of course, it would be hard for anyone not to have fun playing Dewey Finn, a wannabe rock star who doesn't play by any of the conventional rules of life. But Black doesn't overdo it; we actually believe that, despite his own selfish interests in winning the "Battle of the Bands", Dewey really does care about the students' wellbeing. In fact, as he grows closer to them it becomes clear that Linklater is making something resembling a Disney movie, complete with positive lessons, family values, and a heroic, sappy ending. Ebert, again: "Here is a movie that proves you can make a family film that's alive and well-acted and smart and perceptive and funny -- and that rocks."

In other words, as vital as Black's balanced energy is to the success of School of Rock, the material he is working from cannot be overlooked. Mike White's stories were a bit hit-and-miss to that point (Dead Man on Campus, The Good Girl, Orange County), but as Ebert described it, "White's movies lovingly celebrate the comic peculiarities of everyday people", and School of Rock remains both the funniest and most endearing screenplay of his career (the upcoming School of Rock 2 has potential to replace it, but I'm skeptical). Praising the film for Newsweek, David Ansen wondered, "It's a bravura, all-stops-out, inexhaustibly inventive performance. I don't know how much was improvised, and how much comes from White's sharp screenplay, but Black may never again get a part that displays his mad-dog comic ferocity to such brilliant effect."

Unfortunately, Ansen has so far been right on the mark. Black has been given steady work in the past six years, but while much of it has been significant (opposite Kate Winslet in The Holiday, under the direction of Michel Gondry in Be Kind Rewind, and in the star-studded cast of Tropic Thunder), the role that's perhaps best fit his talents was as the voice of Po in last year's animated hit Kung Fu Panda. I'm not proposing an actual theory here, but it might be worth noting that both Kung Fu Panda and School of Rock are essentially kid's movies - maybe Black is best suited for roles that are more obviously juvenile? Food for thought to go along with a last bit of trivia: School of Rock (which was originally The School of Rock) was shockingly given a PG-13 rating due to "rude humor and some drug references", whatever that means. Lamenting the situation, Ebert offered a parting shot: "There's not a kid alive who would be anything but delighted by this film."

And finally, while I don't mean to diminish the work of Linklater at the helm here, for the most part it appears he took a hands-off approach and simply let Black run wild with his young co-stars. It worked beautifully and in the hands of another director this movie could have been bogged down with all kinds of unnecessary "stuff". There is one scene that displays Linklater's casually perfect directing chops, however, and it's the thrilling, emotionally moving finale (or, as Lou Lumenick admitted in the New York Post, "an inspirational climax that's as rousing as it is predictable."). Enjoy:

Underrated MOTM: Toy Soldiers (1991)

Before I write anything about May's Underrated Movie of the Month, Toy Soldiers, I'm obligated to make it known that I haven't seen Red Dawn, the 1984 controversial classic that inspired it. So for those of you are devoted to that movie, or to 1981's Taps, or to 1984's Toy Soldiers - you can save your breath as I'm not making comparisons to them.

That out of the way, I settled on Toy Soldiers after seeing it on a list of some kind recently, as well as hearing the unrelated Martika ballad (the sappiness of which hasn't stopped YouTubers from combining the two). It's a movie that I haven't seen in years but that I'll still find myself watching in surprised horror when I come across it. Also, what better way to celebrate the end of the school year (nevermind that I'm not in school) than a fantasy about destroying your school in a battle against a Colombian druglord?

Written and directed by Daniel Petrie, Jr., who also wrote Turner and Hooch and the Beverly Hills Cop trilogy, Toy Soldiers is the rare movie that was marketed precisely to the audience (teen boys) who couldn't see it due to its R-rating. Whether this led to a theater full of boys pretending they were men or men wishing they were boys, I can't say. In fact I don't even know when I first saw Toy Soldiers, but it definitely wasn't in the theater. Seems to be the norm, though, since the movie took in a measly $15 million upon its release in late April of 1991. Opening weekend it came in third to Stallone and Tomei in Oscar and Matt Dillon in A Kiss Before Dying, a fact which can only be explained, in my opinion, to Toy Soldiers' R-rating.

Or maybe it also had to do with Roger Ebert's grouchy 1-star pan: "Was there any way to make this material original? To find a new twist? Was there anything the filmmakers wanted to say about the situation - other than the crushingly obvious fact that troublemakers in peacetime often become heroes in war? Did anyone connected with the production notice that they were making a movie that, in essence, had already been made? That there was no need for it? That given a budget and a cast, locations and shooting schedule, they had not justified their effort by even trying to make a film it is necessary to see? Or would that be asking too much?" Easy, Roger, easy - and don't think I won't expect you to insert that exact paragraph into your review of the Red Dawn remake next year. Isn't it ironic?

So sure, Toy Soldiers was nothing new. But that doesn't mean it wasn't awesome for a generation of boys daydreaming heroic fantasies during their high school English classes - one major difference likely being the lack of any girl to woo in the movie. No, the Regis High School is an all-boys boarding school in Virginia where "the country's best families send the world's worst students". Among these mischievous teens, Billy Tepper (a pre-Rudy Sean Astin) is the biggest thorn in Dean Edward Parker's (a post-Iron Eagle Louis Gossett, Jr.) side. He's whip-smart, influential, and fearless - the perfect hero-in-waiting when Colombian druglord Luis Cali (Andrew Divoff) and his posse take the entire school hostage.

I think what Ebert misunderstood about Toy Soldiers was that it wasn't really meant to be an analysis of U.S. foreign policy, or about international relations at the end of the cold war. To me the evidence shows that it was just meant to be a rollicking good time for the testosterone-fueled boys who were able to see it. I mean, this is the guy who wrote Beverly Hills Cop, right? In fact, if anything Ebert should have focused on the surprising brutality of the battle. The coarse language and frequent violence against teens (beatings, whippings, shootings) makes it unlikely likely this movie would even be released in 2009 and marketed to a generation that's advanced through their school careers with horrifying school shootings and classroom lockdowns. It's pretty disturbing to consider, but it automatically comes to mind when you see Wil Wheaton emptying the magazine of his machine gun.

Rather than focus on the alleged unoriginality or the harsh violence in Toy Soldiers, it's better to consider the more positive aspects: the stunts are spectacular, the villains are over-the-top (Cali: "If any of the individual explosives are tampered with, theywillEXPLODE!!"), and the comedy is corny and crass. The title Toy Soldiers is actually very symbolic: as "real" as the scenario sometimes seems, it always remains a kind of playground for the viewer, particularly for a generation raised on G.I. Joe. As evidenced by the spoilerific clips below, it's ultimately just a B-movie about the "good guys" vs. the "bad guys", and all of the messy international politics can be safely left on the sideline as ancillary material, like those extra pieces that came with your action figures that you never used.

300 Words About: The Class

The class portrait of a new millennium...

I don't know how to judge The Class as a movie because I didn't see it as a movie, but as an eerily familiar depiction of my own years spent teaching multicultural 13 year-olds at an inner-city school. Despite the existence of a screenplay based on a "novel" (more like a memoir), to me The Class is a documentary more than anything else. Real students, real teachers, real school, real issues, real life. That's what I've taken away in the two weeks since seeing it: the challenges of a rapidly globalizing world are real and they're urgent, and there are no easy answers on how to bridge today's cultural norms with tomorrow's.

This fact was apparently lost on the guy sitting behind us in the theater, who muttered, "What's the point?" as the credits rolled, adding that the movie had "no redeeming qualities". The point, I would argue, is that the world is changing around us and it will be to our benefit to begin focusing on the future instead of the past as soon as possible. The U.S., like France, is going to change much more rapidly in the next 50 years than it has in the last 50 years, and it will require cultural adaptation on the part of everyone from every background.

Although I admit that the cultural makeup of the class seemed a bit more symmetric than I think you'd find in most places (these students in the movie all attend the same school, but I've found nothing saying the group in the movie comprises an actual class), it's certainly true that the number of cultures and ethnicities represented under the roof of one school is almost exponentially increasing, even in places as seemingly monocultural as Minnesota (see: Gran Torino).

Some would argue that the students in the class - tragically true to life - didn't actually learn anything throughout the year, but I would strongly disagree. They learned about other cultures and, perhaps more importantly, they learned about their own. And while understanding the universals of culture might not help them pass the 9th grade, it will most definitely prepare them for the future.

With any luck, these exchanges happening at schools around the world will prevent the development of Walt Kowalskis in future generations.

300 Words About: Hamlet 2

Attention parents: this is not to be confused with "High School Musical"...

There's a moment near the end of Hamlet 2 when Elizabeth Shue (in a terrific "return" to the screen) is sitting in an audience watching the stage production of "Hamlet 2". She's laughing out loud and clapping while the people around her are simply staring in baffled amusement, as if their brains are working overtime trying to pay attention to the musical while also figuring out why she's laughing so much more than them. The scenario is a pretty accurate depiction of my time in the theater watching Hamlet 2. Boisterous laughing would explode from different corners of the theater at different times, and all I could is nervously smile and wonder why I was missing so many of the jokes.

Writer/Director Andrew Fleming (Dick, Nancy Drew) infuses enough easy comedy in his story of a washed-up actor turned high school drama teacher to make Hamlet 2 a light summer flick, but it never quite reaches the level of hilarity that you could rightfully expect from its cast, which includes Steve Coogan (Tropic Thunder), Catherine Keener (Into the Wild), Amy Poehler ("SNL", Baby Mama), Shue, and Melonie Diaz (Be Kind Rewind), who seems to be challenging Ellen Page for the number of high school-age characters she can play in consecutive movies.

The most glaring problem in Hamlet 2 is that the entire weight of the comedy is on the shoulders of Coogan, and it's a load that he can't sustain on his own for 92 minutes. The supporting cast is simply there to receive his jokes (most of which are immature and inane), and none of them offer much on their own. Compare this with the rich characters in something like Waiting for Guffman (which could have produced multiple spin-offs), and you have an idea of how one-dimensional Hamlet 2 is. Moreover, its efforts at poking fun at high school drama programs, Dangerous Minds, and even Elizabeth Shue's career aren't as clever as they should be. In fact, two of the funniest jokes happen to come at the expense of the city of Tucson, AZ, simply because they are two of the jokes that we don't see coming a mile away.

If there is a highlight aside from Coogan's performance, it's the climactic performance of the musical's outrageous showstopper "Rock Me Sexy Jesus," which, while irreverent, is not as outwardly offensive as it may seem. Ironically, had we seen more of the actual stage production of "Hamlet 2", it may have made for a better movie.

REVIEW: American Teen (A)

Background: Although I first heard about American Teen after it premiered at Sundance in January, it wasn't until Craig Kennedy blurbed about it later in the spring that it landed on my radar for good. When I noticed it was on the schedule for a director-present screening at the MSPIFF, it was a must-see (you can read more about Nanette Burnstein's experience making the film in my preview). Going into it I expected little more than a prolonged episode of some trashy MTV show. Now? Let's just say my negative opinion of those shows is even more pronounced after seeing that teens can actually be documented in a thoughtful way.

Synopsis : Burnstein covers a year in the life of four high school seniors in Warsaw, IN. Hannah is the dropout risk who considers her last year a prison sentence; she wants to leave Warsaw immediately. Colin is under pressure to earn a basketball scholarship. His dad is an Elvis impersonator who tells Colin that it's either college or the Army. Megan is a spoiled princess, the popular girl, who terrorizes classmates and plans her future at Notre Dame. Jake is the stereotypical lovelorn geek, obsessed with video games but awkward in social situations. Mitch, a fifth subject that is mostly thrown in as a love interest for Hannah (and to round out the Breakfast Club poster rip-off), is the cool jock that can't quite be trusted. Where will they all end up by graduation?

I Loved:
+ The animated Notre Dame-as-utopia sequence. No offense to the many Notre Dame alumni that I consider friends, but you all deserve that!
+ The genuinely emotional moments, such as Hannah's conversations with her parents.
+ The really hilarious moments of social awkwardness. Poor Jake.

I Liked:
+ The epilogues, which added one more layer to our relationship with the film's subjects.
+ That teachers and school administrators weren't included as supporting players. The focus was on the right place: the teens.
+ The comforting realization that the American high school experience is so similar from place to place.

I Disliked:
- The horrifying realization that the American high school experience is so similar from place to place.
- When the use of animated sequences distracted from or trivialized the real world situations.

I Hated:
- The maliciousness celebrated by Megan and her gang, reminiscent of a documentary adaptation of Mean Girls.

Grade:
Writing - N/A
Acting - N/A
Production - 9
Emotional Impact - 10
Music - 5
Significance - 5

Total: 29/30= 97% = A

Last Word: American Teen is a very easy film to criticize. It doesn't tell a new story, it furthers all the typical stereotypes of American high school students, it smacks of reality TV and it doesn't wrap everything up in a nice, neat message-laden ending. So what? It's hilarious, moving, relevant, and honest, despite the accusations that it may not be. In fact, at the screening I attended Nanette Burnstein said the students actually dialed down their behavior when the cameras weren't rolling, and that the only scene recreated was when Hannah received the text message from Mitch.

In any case, part of me wants to argue that this debate is actually meaningless. American Teen is not an investigation on the war in Iraq or a historical record of a controversial incident. It's simply a contemporary glimpse (and it's only a glimpse) at the challenges facing most teens in America today: developing romances, college choices, "fitting in", family relationships, independence, etc. Nothing new, of course, but maybe that's the point: these issues are just as important to teens in 2008 as they were in 1958. Isn't that fact something to reflect on in and of itself?

I enjoy documentaries like American Teen because they have the potential to unite people. In the case of this film, we come together to look back and collectively laugh at the trivial nature of high school, at the naive sense of urgency that made us think those four years were so important, and at the countless ways in which we tried to make ourselves "different" while somehow still fitting in to the right social groups.

It turns out that, as American Teen amusingly demonstrates, we have a lot more in common with each other - both now and then - than we would like to admit. The American public high school experience is one of the great equalizers in life. Most of us went through the wringer and made it out alive on the other side, and whatever we ended up doing in the years since then, that little bubble of time remains a shared pot from which we can still draw some common insights and perspectives.

Spoken like a näive high school student, right? Forgive me - American Teen successfully reawakened that idealistic spirit in me.

Underrated MOTM: High School High (1996)

The Underrated Movie of the Month (MOTM) for April is an old favorite of mine, even though it's probably the most idiotic movie I'll ever praise on Getafilm. I won't defend High School High as a classic by any stretch, but I'll try to provide some evidence as to why it deserves better than a 7% on Rotten Tomatoes (even if that's only from eight reviews). And I promise, it's a total coincidence that just a few months ago I championed Lean on Me as an Underrated MOTM on these pages.

Let's start with the vitals. Released in the fall of 2006, High School High was directed by Hart Bochman (PCU) and starred Jon Lovitz (recently in Southland Tales), Tia Carrere (still around) and Mekhi Phifer (now a regular on "ER"), but the key element to the team was writer David Zucker, who had by that time already cracked you up with his writing in Airplane!, Top Secret!, and the Naked Gun trilogy. By the mid-90's, the "good teacher in the hood" movie was ripe for a spoof, and Zucker had rich source material: Lean on Me, The Substitute, Stand and Deliver, and Dangerous Minds, to name a few. High School High threaded bits from each into its formulaic plot: schlub teacher innocently lands in tough school, befriends attractive colleague, wins over students, inspires them to pass state-administered exams, defies evil principal, and so on. Roger Ebert observed that it "makes the crucial error of taking its story seriously and angling for a happy ending," but I either didn't notice or didn't care. There wasn't a real attempt at making it a dramatic movie, but Kenneth Turan of the L.A. Times criticized the same aspect of the direction.

How Hart Bochman became attached to this is a mystery to me, but it's interesting to note that Trey Parker was reportedly offered the chance to direct before him. He turned it down, but ended up starring in BASEketball two years later, which was written and directed by...David Zucker. I also don't know how the casting happened for High School High, but Jon Lovitz turned out to be a great fit. He was just coming out of his glory years (if he really had any?) from "Saturday Night Live" and "The Critic," and he had the perfect, nasally voice for a nerdy teacher. Tia Carrere was the exotic fantasy of Wayne's World fans and had recently been the evil seductress in True Lies (one of the last great action movies). Mekhi Phifer was still a relative unknown with only two film credits to his name, though one of them was his debut in Spike Lee's Clockers. Aside from Louise Fletcher (yep, Nursed Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), the rest of the cast were and still are mostly unknown, though it looks like several are earning a living with television roles.

Yes, the movie is stupid, but it's hard to defend the majority of mainstream comedy as "smart." High School High existed in an odd window in Hollywood - after the classic spoofs in the style of Mel Brooks, but before the cheap referencing and bodily fluid showcasing in spoofs like Scary Movie and its now omnipresent spawn. In its own unique way, High School High delivered sharp satire, dry dialogue, and decent acting (even if that "acting" was just delivering deadpan lines). Said New York Times critic Lawrence Van Gelder: "There's not much sense to the plot. But the film makers' blunderbuss approach to humor, with visual and verbal jokes coming in profusion and scattering high and low, guarantees that just about every funnybone is bound to be hit, some more than once."

How many times your funnybone is hit will depend on your taste and your mood, but chances are good that you'll chuckle a few times. You can't place it on a list with Spaceballs, Blazing Saddles, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery or others that I previously mentioned, but I find the Zucker influence in High School High a lot funnier than most of the classically-defined spoofs that are being churned out these days.

I really can't believe I just attempted a defense of this movie.

Underrated MOTM: Lean on Me (1989)

The Underrated Movie of the Month for January is an oldie but a goodie. Originally I thought of High School High, the actually funny parody of all of the movies like Lean on Me. Then I ran across Lean on Me on TV a few weeks ago and decided that IT was actually the gem.

Released in the spring of 1989, Lean on Me featured Morgan Freeman fresh off an Oscar nomination, Robert Guillaume, and Lynne Thigpen - best known as The Chief from "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" (Did you know she died suddenly in 2003? Tragic.). Rounding out the cast were a bunch of unknown actors and actual students from Eastside High, where the story is based. Karen Malina White had a nice turn as Kaneesha Carter, and everybody's favorite character, "Sams," was played by Jermaine "Huggy" Hopkins, who based on his IMDb credit list went on to act in predominantly African-American movies (Juice, Phat Beach, How to Be a Player) before disappearing in 2002. Actually somebody was trying to contact him through IMDb recently- kind of funny.

The plot of Lean on Me was neither original or complicated, but it was a true story like its parent Stand and Deliver and its child Dangerous Minds. Hard-nosed principal Joe Clark (Freeman) brandishes a baseball bat and the personality of a grizzly bear to whip the underachieving students and faculty into shape at Eastside High School in Paterson, NJ. He alienates everybody from the superintendent to the mayor before the students dramatically change and the school pulls a sharp 180. By the end, the students have joined forces to march on the city jail, where Clark is being held on some bogus charge. And along the way we get to enjoy dialogue like this:

Leonna Barrett: The school board's going to hear this at 7:00, and we are going to vote your black ass out!
Thomas Sams: Yo, witch! Vote on THIS!
[gestures angrily]
Joe Clark: That won't help me, Sams.

Here's why I like the movie, aside from memorable performances and a tear-jerking story: It didn't shy away from nastiness. The first 10 minutes are like a nightmare! "Welcome to the Jungle" plays over a montage of drug dealing, fights, and a teacher stretchered out of the cafeteria after having his head repeatedly smashed into the floor during a busy lunch hour. The perfect tone is set. We're scared of the drug dealers, the criminals, and the future of the school. We can't stand Joe Clark, but we all know he's right in what he's doing. I don't know if it was a true representation of Joe Clark (who helped in production and who resigned from Eastside High the year after Lean on Me was released to become a motivational speaker), but I don't really care either. It stands the test of time as an example of urban American schools in the crack-addled late 80's.

Lastly, I've come to realize that the film was directed by John G. Avildsen, who won the Oscar for Best Director for Rocky and also directed all three Karate Kid movies (and Rocky V - but don't remind him). That's all fine, but what's most pleasing is that Avildsen also directed my favorite movie of all time, The Power of One.

REVIEW: The Great Debaters (B-)

Background: Denzel Washington (American Gangster, Déjà Vu) directs for the second time in his career in The Great Debaters, written by Robert Eisele and based on the true story of the 1935 Wiley College debate team. Starring Nate Parker (Pride), Jurnee Smollett (Gridiron Gang), and the ironically named - and unrelated - Denzel Whitaker (Training Day) as the student debaters, the film also features Washington, Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland), Kimberly Elise (Pride, John Q), and Jon Heard (Sweetland). Despite the star power and feel-good story, the film is sure to get lost in the award competition at this time of the year.

Synopsis: In 1935 at Wiley College in Marshall, TX, professor/debate team coach Melvin B. Talson (Washington) is recruiting for the upcoming season. On the side, he is also helping local sharecroppers form a union, much to the chagrin of local Sheriff Dozier (Heard). The team is selected in predictable fashion, and is anchored by disillusioned cool guy Henry Lowe (Parker), smart and beautiful Samantha Brooke (Smollett), and young yet mature James Farmer, Jr. (D. Whitaker), who is the son of Wiley’s theology professor James Farmer (F. Whitaker). The team rises to prominence while dealing with personal tensions, hormones, Talson’s communist activity, and dangerous racism in the local community. Before long they are off to Harvard for a nationally broadcast debate against the defending champs. Cue every scene from Hoosiers from here through to the end, but replace the basketball court with a debating stage.

I Loved:
+ The relationship between Denzel Whitaker and Forest Whitaker as father and son. It was the best character development in the movie and showed how frighteningly well Forest Whitaker can act.

I Liked:
+ Denzel Whitaker as James Farmer, Jr., who stole every scene he was in. The scene where he confronted a drunk Henry Lowe was especially well done.

I Disliked:
- That the story wasn’t very rich, as interesting story lines were only briefly dipped into, like racism and communism, which only seemed to be there to add some melodrama. But I guess you can only do so much in two hours, and the debate team was the focus.

I Hated:
- The poorly done ending, which was painfully predictable to the point of boredom. After the final speech, you don’t need to draw out the announcement and celebration scenes.

Grade:
Writing - 8
Acting - 9
Production - 7
Emotional Impact - 7
Music - 5
Significance - 5

Total: 41/50= 82% = B-

Last Word: The Great Debaters is a story of redemption and heartwarming triumph, but it lacks the genuine drama that would have made it an excellent movie. I’m pretty disappointed with Denzel Washington’s work as director here. As in the movie, a lot of his production seemed “canned,” most notably at the end, which was lifted straight from any other underdog-to-champion movie. Any creative effort here would have been an improvement, and Denzel showed he could do that when he directed Antwone Fisher. My favorite scenes featured Forest Whitaker, who makes every character believable. Overall, the acting was the strongest component of The Great Debaters, which never fully reaches its potential. I don’t even think it made me sob, which has to mean something wasn’t done right.