R, 1 hr. 33 min. Directed By:
John Stalberg. Release Date:
Jun 1, 2012.
My message about this movie can be
summed up by pilfering the tagline from the anti-drug campaign of the last 20
years: “just say no.”
I didn’t go in to this movie with
any real expectations. I knew that High School was going to be Gen Yne’s
variant of Up in Smoke. I get that.
I knew it was going to be lame and probably show a bunch of stoner kids
having flashes of genius that allow them to get out of all the trouble they
spend the movie campaigning for. I knew
this was going to show burnouts getting rewarded. I knew the cast was going to suck and that
any laugh I got was going to be
Those were my expectations. All story-based for the most part. What I didn’t expect was that the supporting cast
was going to BLOW THE DOORS off the main cast: Yeardley Smith, Colin Hanks, and
Michael Chicklis (I didn’t even recognize him) were so very much better than the
two kids who lead up the cast. They were
better than Adrian Brody, who I used to like, and who I still want to like
every time I see him in a movie, but who gets worse every time I see him. Ten years ago, even five, I thought Brody had
a future, but now all I think he can give us is something quirky and slightly
lame. High School wasn’t anything new.
A little bit of violence, spending half the movie running around with
his shirt off and displaying fake tattoos.
If sarcasm had an official font, I’d use some.
Now, that isn’t that there aren’t
some funny moments in High School. Just as your own four years of high school
weren’t filled with misery, hormones, and desperation, neither were these four
years. Well, it was 90 minutes, but it
did feel like four years again. I
considered walking out on at least three occasions, but I kept getting
sidetracked by the burnout antics. My
personal favorite is the kid jumping off a second story balcony in the school
library and landing on his junk. I
laughed for half the movie from that scene.
But anyway, you’re better off
ignoring that this movie exists. Just
say no.
