That’s Harmon on the left and Kirstie Alley… is in the film.
1980s Mark Harmon was certainly a handsome fellow, and from all accounts he still is today, he was also pretty likable. Even when he showed up on Moonlighting to snatch Maddie away from David Addison I wanted to hate him but he was just so… nice.
Here he turns the niceness factor up to 11 as a teacher of a class of students (who all look about 20 something) confined to Summer School to catch up. Harmon himself is Mr “Just call me:” Shoop, a phys-ed teacher who loafs his way through class and demands practically nothing from his students, therefore they love him. He wants to be in a class with a bunch of losers no more than they do, let’s check them off shall we?
- The dreamer. Check!
- The jock. Check!
- The born loser. Check!
- The sassy black chick. Check!
- The nerd. Check!
- The hip dudes. Check!
- The hot exchange student. Check! (Never gets her top off though. That cost ’em.)
- The sleepy guy. Check!
B.I.N.G.O. spells BINGO!
We know how this works, Shoop could care less about what the gang does so he turns a blind eye while they wreak havoc and run around like maniacs doing anything but study, all while the nasty Dean of the school stands and watches in an exasperated manner. Shoop spends as much time trying to mack on the “hot” other female teacher played by Kirstie Alley, boy is he lucky that wasn’t real life huh? Shoop asks Alley’s character out for dinner dozens of times in the film and she continually knocks him back, from the looks of things she hasn’t knocked one back since though.
Shoop gets the ultimatum “Pass ‘em or you’re fired”, he passed the ultimatum down the chain “Pass or else”, and as the kids realise that book learnin’ is OK Shoop comes to recognise that they aren’t all losers and learns to love teaching! (Cue the “Aaaaaawwwwwwwww” from the audience, I’m feeling misty myself.)
He changes their lives, and they in turn change his. (Stop it! I’m not crying, it’s unusually humid!)
The usual contrived situations are dealt with, drinking, teacher crushes, house parties and jail, and everyone manages to learn multiple lessons along the way with no real harm coming to anyone.
There is a totally unexpected and over the top gore scene near the end of the film that is actually OK but desperately out of place, and Shoop gets to deliver what I think is one of the better lines from one of these flicks:
“You guys drop out and be illiterate, I’m going to Hawaii where I’ll be tan!”
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. Light and breezy and totally disposable. Study hard kids.
