HIGH SCHOOL HIGH
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
(1996) *1/2 (out of four)
Even though it seems more parody movies are being released than ever, the well is quickly drying up. The last truly good one was the second HOT SHOTS movie back in 1993, and that judgment is certainly debatable. The thing is, with the old style parody films, they still seemed like actual movies. You go to the theater to see SPY HARD or DON'T BE A MENACE and come out thinking you dreamed the entire thing. That's just how bizarre the parody movies have gotten. Or maybe I've consumed too much Canola oil.
HIGH SCHOOL HIGH is Jon Lovitz's first starring role, which is the funniest thing about the movie. Lovitz was bad enough in TRAPPED IN PARADISE, and there he had Nicolas Cage and Dana Carvey to fall back on. Here, he co-stars with Tia Carrere and Mekhi Phifer. Yes, that's a real name, not a random series of typed letters. If you're interested, this is what a random series of typed letters looks like: Mekhi Phifer. Damn.
DANGEROUS MINDS was pretty laughable, but HIGH SCHOOL HIGH as an offshoot of that is infinitely whackier. Annoyingly wacky, actually, with so many strained punchlines and predictable gags that we're screaming at the top of our lungs, "Where's Leslie Nielson?!" Lovitz doesn't fit into the joke-a-second parody mold because the protagonists in these movies aren't supposed to know what's happening is funny or anything less than normal. Lovitz spouts more lame wisecracks here than a Catskills comic.
The genre parodied this time is the inspirational high school drama, about an ambitious, idealistic teacher who comes into the inner-city school and teaches a bunch of underpriveliged kids to love all things school-related. These kinds of movies have been around forever, from the days of TO SIR, WITH LOVE on. It's ripe for parody but doesn't deserve the treatment it gets here, especially with Lovitz at the helm. What can you say about a movie whose greatest laugh comes when its main character tries to have sex with a cat?
Lovitz is, of course, the teacher who quits a promising job at a prominent college to teach at Marion Barry High, probaby the most redundant three words ever. In his first ten minutes there, he gets his car stolen, finds himself in the middle of a gang fight and gets on the bad side of the principal. He also meets Tia and Mekhi -- Tia the administrative assistant he soon falls in love with and Mekhi the most popular student in the class, the one the others look up to, kind of like Enrico in DANGEROUS MINDS.
The plot is secondary to the endless stream of sight and sound gags. Lovitz has the D.J. at the school dance play "Rhinestone Cowboy," a baseball bat gets caught in somebody's afro, Lovitz accidentally unravels the principal's dress, miniature police cars race around the parts in somebody's corn rows, Lovitz engages in a game of chicken with two other students, Lovitz tries to have sex with a cat, etc.
Some of it is funny, mostly the same stuff they put in the HIGH SCHOOL HIGH trailer. If you've seen that, you've seen what's good about this movie, which just proves David Zucker needs his brother Jerry and Jim Abrahams to keep him from churning out crap like this.
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