Review of High School High (1996) by James R — 20 May 2011

Richard Clark (Jon Lovitz) has joined Marion berry High School, as the history teacher, and intends to turn the school from a run-down inner city cliché school into a fine establishment.

Yes, this is a spoof movie. Spoof movies are often lauded in this day age, because of two guys known as Jaon Friedberg and Aaron Setzler, who took everything that was originally funny with spoof movies and ran it to the ground up to the point where we weren't laughing at all anymore. Granted, this film isn't perfect, but it doesn't set out to be a perfect movie. It sets out to spoof the films where teachers try to get inner city kids to become better people, and manages to give off jokes, a number of which are actually funny.

The plot manages to somehow jump to drug dealers, turning the plot into ridiculous territory (but not as ridiculous as any of the spoofs of the last decade). The dialogue is cheesy and a number of the jokes try a bit too much to make you laugh. Jon Lovitz does seem right for the lead role, like they made the film around him playing Mr Clark's role. He's utterly entertaining in the role, and a number of the actors in this film play their roles well also, such as Mekhi Pheifer as lead student Griff and Louise Fletcher as the principal, but a lot of the actors play their roles quite clichéd, but that was possibly intentional. There is character development, but all of it except Griff's feels by the book and clichéd.

Maybe I'm being a bit too generous with this film's rating. I enjoyed it when I was a kid, so maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic. But the jokes did manage to make me laugh, the first half of the film more than the second half though. I stand by my rating though.