{"id":25411,"date":"2017-06-01T17:30:23","date_gmt":"2017-06-01T21:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=25411"},"modified":"2019-02-09T06:18:43","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T11:18:43","slug":"you-have-to-see-this-summer-school-1987","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/06\/01\/you-have-to-see-this-summer-school-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"You Have to See This! Summer School (1987)"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a kid I spent many a day watching movies on television edited for content. I spent most of my time watching WPIX Channel 11 in New York which was then considered “New York’s Number One Movie Station.” Every ad for movies they aired always garnered my attention, save for a select few here and there. A lot of those films became future favorites like \u201cAnimal House\u201d and \u201cA Christmas Story.\u201d Like clockwork about every four months the channel would air the television trailer for 1987\u2019s “Summer School”, and every time I avoided it like the plague. It just never seemed all too funny, especially in the light of films like \u201cFast Times at Ridgemont High.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mark Harmon plays “Shoop,” a teacher and part time California surfer has his summer vacation derailed when he\u2019s blackmailed in to teaching summer school. Anxious for tenure, rather than surf in Hawaii, he takes on the class filled with slackers, under privileged individuals, and the eccentric, all the while trying to convince them to study so they can make it in to the next grade and gain some sense of self-confidence. Meanwhile he bonds with a fellow teacher, and tries to get his students to pass before the season is up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Years later, I’m glad I was able to experience “Summer School,\u201d because while it might not be a masterpiece, it\u2019s a perfectly imperfect eighties comedy. What makes it more interesting is that it\u2019s a pretty good teen comedy directed by Carl Reiner and scored by Danny Elfman. Considering the talents of both gentlemen, \u201cSummer School\u201d seems like an unlikely project that is never really anything more than a movie about a rag tag group of misfits and their teacher.<\/p>\n

Mark Harmon is Shoop, a slacker teacher who lives in California and is always inches away from a beach, school has let out, and he hopes to vacation to Hawaii with his sexy girlfriend. When the summer school teacher quits after winning the lottery, Shoop is wrangled by the militant and horrific school vice principal who blackmails him in to teaching summer school so he can garner a recommendation for tenure. Sometimes it’s a “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” wannabe, then it becomes an inspirational film about a teacher changing a bunch of slackers, then it’s a romance about a slacker who happens to be a teacher and garners some sense of responsibility.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Other times it’s an icky love triangle between Mark Harmon’s teacher Shoop, Kirstie Alley, and a sixteen year old student named Pam (the fetching Courtney Thorne-Smith) who has a crush on him. She\u2019s a young girl coming from a hard situation at home who begins forming affection for Shoop when he refuses to give up on her as a student. For 1987 it\u2019s a pretty bittersweet sub-plot. \u201cSummer School\u201d introduces a small group of diverse and eccentric summer school students, some of whom are slackers, while others are held back mainly by their home lives. Despite being an occasionally goofy movie, \u201cSummer School\u201d doesn\u2019t really tack on the whole \u201cThey\u2019re just lazy\u201d tag on the summer school students.<\/p>\n

Shawnee Smith plays a young girl who is on the verge of giving birth to a child and has no choice but to take summer school, while Kelly Jo Minter is a dyslexic girl trying to figure out how to work around her learning disorder. “Summer School” has become something of a cult classic, and for good reason. It has such a sense of eccentricity to it, that it\u2019s tough not to admire what it attempts to pull off with its mix of slapstick comedy and genuine characterization. Like every eighties comedy, there are one or two spicoli stand ins in the form of Dave and Chainsaw, two hardcore horror geeks having a tough time working around their inability to think about anything else.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cSummer School\u201d is one of the very few comedies that openly pays tribute to the horror genre so unabashedly and feature genuine horror movie geeks. Often times the geeks were either computer nerds, or overweight lumps, but Dave and Chainsaw take their love for horror to where they begin to steal the show. This was a time before loving horror wasn\u2019t chic or sexy, so it\u2019s fun to see side characters Dave and Chainsaw embrace their fanaticism right through to the goofy and twisted finale. Reiner also assembles a decent myriad horror players like Shawnee Smith as an underage pregnant student, Fabiana Udenio as a sexy foreign exchange student, and Kelly Jo Minter.<\/p>\n

The cast all turn in solid performances, including star Harmon who is admittedly outshined by his young supporting cast, but is entertaining as the slacker summer school teacher. \u201cSummer School\u201d is tonally uneven, but a silly and charming eighties oddity that entertains and will garner some solid laughs for fans that like this kind of formulaic comedy and teen cast.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cSummer School\u201d is such a weird kind of eighties movie about slackers and under achievers. While it sags in small points, it\u2019s an interesting kind of comedy with a surprisingly good cast of cast horror vets, and one of the first comedies ever to make the geeks horror movie geeks. Before Wes Craven gave us Randy in \u201cScream,\u201d Carl Reiner gave us Dave and Chainsaw. For that alone, \u201cSummer School\u201d warrants a viewing or two.<\/p>\n