For the second meeting of the Onionheads Movie Club, I chose the movie Three O'Clock High. It was a movie I thoroughly enjoyed as a kid, but haven't really heard a whole lot about since. I think at the meeting I was the only one who had even heard of it.
The movie stars Casey Siemaszko (Back to the Future, Back to the Future II) as the unlucky nerd, Jerry Mitchell, who has been assigned to write an article for the school newspaper on the new kid in school. The new kid jost happens to be the notorious bully, Buddy Revelle (Richard Tyson from Kindergarten Cop). Things all go downhill for Jerry when he happens to pat Buddy's arm and Buddy hates to be touched. As a punishment for Jerry's crime, Buddy challenges him to a fight after school at exactly 3:00.
GOOD:
The acting was good and the characters were cast very well. You really do feel sorry for Casey Siemazko and Richard Tyson plays the ginormous Buddy to perfection. I thought the storyline was great. Even though the movie is geared toward highschoolers, I could still put myself in Jerry's shoes, wondering how he would ever get out of the mess he had gotten into. Even the camera work was good. It had some timely slow-mo's and super fast zooms, and you really felt the pressure Jerry was under everytime the clocked ticked forward with a big boom. To add to all of this there was the appearance of a slim, but still bald Jeffery Tambor (Arrested Development, The Larry Sanders Show) as Mr. Rice.
BAD:
If I have to pick out something bad about this movie, it would be the character of Jerry's female companion Franny. She had some weird goth thing about her and I am not sure whether we were supposed to think she was hot or just really odd. Her character was pretty expendable since we already had Jerry's sister, the hot blonde new girl, and the somewhat sexy teacher to fill in all the female roles.
DATED:
The movie dated itself in the way you would expect a high school movie of the '80s would. The clothes and hairstyles are all unmistakably 1987. Other than that, the movie did a fair job of staying relevant. Bullies were around in 1987, they were around when I was in high school in the '90s and they will probably be around when my kids go to high school (although they probably won't wear skin tight jeans, boots, and leather jackets).
Rating as a kid: 4 stars out of 5
Rating as an adult: 4 stars out of 5
I really enjoyed this movie. Some of the things I didn't get at age 10, I picked up on as an adult. If I came across this movie while zooming through the channels, I would definitely stop and watch it again.
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4 comments:
i was unsure of this movie at first but it turned out to be kinda funny. i liked the ability to capture 1980's high school atire perfectly and how crazy getting ready is. especially when u sleep late. i thought the guy from kindergarten cop who played buddy? was scary and in no way even close to high school age but as usual they cast most of the characters in their late 20's for high school roles. the kid who was the main character did a good job of making u feel sorry for him. but the "pretty blonde girl" is kinda creepy instead of cool. and the teachers were definitely dorky. they did a good job on making a classic 80's high school movie i give it a 3.5 ( i know illegal)
I'm surprised that this movie isn't more popular. I had never heard of it before. I actually liked it pretty well, but I think the reason that it never became popular is two-fold.
First, it doesn't really appeal strongly to any one age group. It would be a little dry for high school aged kids and a little young for adults.
Secondly, the casting was terrible. I would say that the "high school kids" in the movie actually ranged in age from 12 to 35. There were guys walking around that probably had kids approaching high school age.
I have to disagree with Jason and Elisha about the main character. I didn't find him endearing or find myself able to relate to him. He was the kind of nerd that you don't really like in movies. As opposed to someone like Anthony Michael Hall who is a nerd, but makes you root for him. This movie suffers most from bad casting.
However, the story is pretty good. And the cinematography is actually pretty cool. I'm not sure who the director was, but he did a great job with interesting camera angles and zooms.
I would give the movie 3 stars out of 5. I thought about giving it 4, but in the end, the lead characters didn't make me care enough about them (and I agree with Jason that some of them could have been left out entirely).
This movie had the misfortune of coming out during that three year span of the 80's where there were seemingly thousands of awesome movies coming out each week. A few years sooner or later and it would've been a big hit. It was better than I imagined it would be, but that is not entirely complimentary. The one problem I had with the movie is that it never made up its mind if it was going to be an over-the-top wacky comedy or if it was going to be your typical 80's coming-of-age tale. Instead it straddled the line between the two, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. If it had abandoned the underlying message of standing up for ones self and went heavy on the gags it would've ended up as a Better of Dead clone. If it had ditched the humor in favor of a more serious tone it would've been a poor mans Breakfast Club. This film seemed very insistent on making it's own identity in the heavily saturated "High School Movie w/Crazy Hijinx" market, yet it never really goes out of its way to do anything ground breaking. I'll echo Chris on the lead character being completely and utterly unlikable. I can't put my finger on why, but I never at anytime in the film wanted anything good to happen to him. Perhaps this says something about me? What you end up with is your typical 80's paint-by-numbers that runs out of steam about 3/4ths the way through and becomes a lackluster After School Special. On the bright side, it did have some great gags and Jeffery Tambor alone gets it two stars. And it was too short of a movie to be truly offensive. The whole thing with all the wild rumors being spread about the new kid at school reminded me of how retarded teenagers can be, and when you get to be about 30 remembering what it was like to be a teenager gets harder and harder. I stand by my original score of 3.0, as it was fun to view, but I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again.
I am a sucker for high school drama movies and watching Three O'Clock High brought back memories of Sixteen Candles and Teen Witch...all 80's flicks where you root for the dork and somehow they rise to the top. Setting aside my bias for movies of this genre, the story line is far from original, but the humor was a redeeming quality. I was not a huge fan of any of the characters. I didn't feel that I could relate to any of them, but if I had, it would have bumped my score to the next level. The over-the-top sister, dorkier-than-dork lead character, weird goth girl, and 40 year old bully giant, are just yet another portrayal of our stereotypes of high schoolers. However, the movie elicited various feelings in me: laughter, sympathy, fear, excitement, all of which make for a decent movie. While I wouldn't buy this movie and choose to watch it over and over again, I would not be opposed to seeing it more than once. For that reason, I will give it a 3.5.
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