Review of Assassination of a High School President (2008) by Walter M — 09 Sep 2010

In "Assassination of a High School President," Bobby Funke(Reece Daniel Thompson) has dreams of getting a scholarship to the prestigious summer journalism school at Northwestern University. The only problem with this is that he does not currently write for the school newspaper but feels a profile of school president Paul Moore(Patrick Taylor), with the help of Paul's girlfriend Francesca(Mischa Barton), will get him the much needed attention. First, however, the SAT's are stolen with Principal Kirkpatrick(Bruce Willis) out for blood. Funke does some more digging and breaks the cardinal rule of journalism forbidding using stuffed unicorns to elicit information to unmask the culprit...

I know I am not the first person to unfavorably compare "Assassination of a High School President" to the superior "Brick," even if it is slightly unfair since Funke is the only one who feels like he is in a detective movie. That's not to mention the movie references which include "Chinatown," "The Usual Suspects" and possibly "The Caine Mutiny" which pushes "Assassination of a High School President" uncomfortably towards parody. It is a shame and unnecessary because when it hits its eccentric stride(led by an uncharacteristically unhinged performance from Bruce Willis), it is actually quite fun to watch. That's not to mention its keen observations of high school life where the only thing worse than being at the low end of the social ladder is to be at the top.