BEFORE: Ugh, I know this is the Summer Rock & Doc Block, but I kind of regret programming this one, just to help close the circle. I'm not a fan of the Ramones, I don't like any of their songs, I just never saw the appeal. Most of them have passed away, I think Marky is the only one left, and I only know that because somebody I know was managing him at San Diego Comic Con the last year I was there. Still, this film from the late 1970's is regarded as something of a cult classic, so I'm curious to see if there's anything there - Turner Classic Movies ran this in a double-feature with tomorrow's movie, so doesn't THAT make you feel old?
Alix Elias carries over from "Adrienne".
THE PLOT: Ramones fanatic and delinquent Riff Randell battles it out with the strict new principal of Vince Lombardi High School, Miss Togar, with help from the Ramones
AFTER: Yeah, this is a bad one - I regret my decision. The story makes no sense, the production values are practically non-existent, and it's a blatant attempt to exploit the teens' love of the Ramones music (for some reason...) to make more money from their appeal, or lack of it. It so wanted to be "A Hard Day's Night", which also had zero plot but shot the Beatles into the stratosphere of money-earning, but it's just not that. It wants so badly to be "punk rock", but I don't think the filmmakers even understood the term. Jeez, I've seen porn movies with more plot and better sets, so really this feels like a porn movie where everybody somehow forgot to have sex.
Sure, it's wish fulfillment - every teen wishes they could stand up to the authority in their school, get their favorite rock stars to come and give a concert, and then, when the shit hits the fan, just take some chemicals from the science lab and blow the whole place up. Umm, sure, that looks good on paper, but then you've blown up the school, and you're going to jail. Not a great plan. I can't even say this is like "National Lampoon's Animal House", dumbed down from college to the high-school level, because the plot doesn't even have the organizational structure that film had, which, admittedly, was close to nil.
Yes, there's a Dean Wormer-like character, Evelyn Togar, who takes over the school as the new principal, and the FIRST thing she does is shut down the outdoor dancing to the Ramones song and - shocker - make everyone go to class! For this, she has to be taken down, well, we don't want our students going to CLASS, now, do we? After that, it's all about Riff (a girl named Riff? never happens...) cutting school for three days so she can stand in line for Ramones tickets, while her friend, the bookish Kate Rambeau, agrees to participate in dating training sessions with Tom Roberts, the school quarterback who talks about the weather with every girl in school, but is clueless about how to date them and get lucky. This is confusing, to say the least - didn't most high school kids in 1979 know how to have sex? Why does he need to take lessons?
Then there are two "hall monitors" who work for the principal, but they don't look like teens, they seem to be about 35 years old, and they're only interested in beating up nerdy kids and giving out "demerits". Kate gets detention for the first time, and so does Riff, but Riff claims to have spent more hours in detention than anyone else in school. She buys the Ramones tickets - actually she buys 100 of them at 10 dollars each. Umm, what high-school kid in 1979 has a spare THOUSAND dollars? Nothing makes much sense here, did the screenwriters ever attend high school? They seem to have no idea how anything works.
I think maybe this opened the door for irreverent teen comedies of the future, like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", and (I'm guessing) the "American Pie" movies - but it's not a great movie itself, not by any stretch of the imagination. The acting is so bad, across the board, that everything comes off as unbelievable and ridiculous - and this is all before the Ramones even show up!
The band finally comes to town, riding in a pink Cadillac, playing guitars that couldn't possibly be plugged in and with Joey singing into a chicken wing, not a microphone, for some reason. WTF? And they arrive at the concert hall to hang out with the people waiting in line? That never happens, because why would you let the fans see the band before the show? Then they won't buy tickets, you idiot screenwriters. The writers don't know how high school works, they don't know how rock concerts work, or microphones, or dating, or well, really much of anything, so for me, most of the jokes just didn't land. It's all just stupid, or maybe I'm getting too old to enjoy this sort of thing. You know you're old when you root for the teachers and not the students, right?
Anyway, I guess if I liked the Ramones or any of their songs, then maybe I'd be a little more forgiving here. But I don't, so I'm not. It's a cult classic, congratulations, but it's also severely dumb.
Also starring P.J. Soles (last seen in "Breaking Away"), Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard (last seen in "Solo: A Star Wars Story"), Dey Young (last seen in "Frankie and Johnny"), Mary Woronov (last seen in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action"), Paul Bartel (last seen in "Hard Time: The Premonition"), Dick Miller (last seen in "Matinee"), Don Steele (last heard in "Gremlins"), Loren Lester, Daniel Davies, Lynn Farrell, Herbie Braha, Grady Sutton (last seen in "Support Your Local Gunfighter"), Chris Somma, Marla Rosenfield, Terry Soda, Joey Ramone (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different"), Johnny Ramone (ditto), Dee Dee Ramone (ditto), Marky Ramone (ditto), with the voice of Johnny Gilbert and cameos from Rodney Bingenheimer (last seen in "Bad Reputation"), Lorna Doom (ditto), Joe Dante, Monte Melnick (last seen in "New Wave: Dare to Be Different")
RATING: 3 out of 10 pizza boxes
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