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Starring Jon Lovitz. ![[Photo]](/photos/highschoolhigh1.jpg) I was truly looking forward to screening this film. I had already viewed the four dramatic Inner City High School movies and was rather anxiously awaiting a change of pace. To my pleasure, High School High turned out to be just that; an irreverently funny comedic take on the Inner City High School genre. Written by David Zucker, Robert Locash, and Pat Proft, three men who have combined to give us the Naked Gun trilogy, Top Secret!, Airplane!, Bachelor Party, the Hot Shots films, and the upcoming Mafia, High School High tells the story of Richard Clark, played by Jon Lovitz, a suburban teacher who dreams of working in an inner city high school, where he will actually be able to make a difference in the children's lives. He gets his opportunity when a teacher at Marion Barry High School is kidnapped by his own students. After a rocky beginning, Lovitz slowly gains the respect of the teenagers and, with the help of his co-worker/girlfriend Tia Carrerre, starts to fight back against the street gang that controls Barry High School. I've always ![[Photo]](/photos/highschoolhigh2.jpg) had trouble writing about movies like High School High--comedies that just want to make the audience laugh--since there isn't any point in commenting on the acting, directing, or implausible actions, Lovitz swallowing a racquetball for one, because these are all minor points in the grander scheme of the movie. Now, had Michelle Pfeiffer, or Edward James Olmos swallowed a racquetball, and remarked that it would be interesting to see what would happen after breakfast the next morning in their respective Inner City High School films, I would have had more than enough material on which to pontificate endlessly. However, in a spoof such as this, I can't do that without sounding foolish. I've always liked Lovitz, from his time on Saturday Night Live to City Slickers 2, but I was slightly worried that he was not cut out for a role as a leading man, regardless of the subject matter of the film. Lovitz, like other Saturday Night Live alumnus Dana Carvey and the late Phil Hartman, have always been best as sidekicks, as the funny guy to someone else's straight main. When these actors strayed away from these types of roles, as Carvey did in Clean Slate and Opportunity Knocks, it usually spells disaster, since it is hard to make the transition from sidekick to lead. But Lovitz dodged these bullets in High School High, performing as solidly in the lead as one could expect, carrying himself in a manner that elicited many laughs from the audience. As the Inner City High School films go, High School High is in a class of its own. The message of 'hard work prevails' is still present, but it is delivered in a more entertaining fashion than that in the other films, especially from the way in which Stand and Deliver's Olmos is shown, working his kids harder than the employees in a Korean athletic shoe factory. This was an astonishingly good send-up of the Inner City High School genre and damn funny in its own right. Along with Dangerous Minds, High School High was the only Inner City High School film to make the grade.
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