Year 16, Day 121 - 4/30/24 - Movie #4,720
BEFORE: Another month has come and gone, just 29 films watched this month, though I meant to take things a little slower and program more breaks for myself, it just didn't work out that way because my chain to Mother's Day really wouldn't allow it. But here's the format breakdown for April:
And hey, I didn't have to resort to a pirate torrent site for any films, which is really just good planning on my end. I mean, it's good to know the one I use is THERE, in case I program something on a streaming site and then it disappears on me, but I'd rather not use it if I don't have to.
Michael McKean carries over again from "Jerry and Marge Go Large".
THE PLOT: The story of a girl who is willing to do anything to become valedictorian, even if it means murdering the teacher that stands in her way.
AFTER: We just passed the 25th anniversary of the Columbine shooting a little over a week ago, and this is a film that was affected by the incident - it was originally titled "Killing Mrs. Tingle" and had a darker tone to it, but then studio executives figured that maybe it wasn't the right time to title a film with the concept of a teen trying to kill their teacher. Probably the right call, although the story then felt a little disjointed here, the teacher in question did get threatened with a cross bow, but then the teens felt that the worst thing they could do to the teacher they didn't like would be to take compromising photos of her as a way to blackmail her and get a better grade in her class. Well, that's progress, I suppose, and maybe an important life lesson, because if you kill your teacher then she won't help you, and then she may just get replaced with another teacher who also doesn't like you. And if all your teachers don't like you, well, umm, maybe it's YOU, you're the problem. Self-reflection can be tough.
The last few films have really been about doing what you need to do to get ahead, whether that's looking the other way when a football player is clearly juicing, or sabotaging the other contestants in a beauty pageant, or buying 8,000 lottery tickets over four days time. So I guess we're just spending a few days in legally unclear territory, it happens. "Misguided" is perhaps the best word for the teens seen here, because it's a bad idea to try to steal the answers to the upcoming history exam for someone else, and then it's a worse idea to go to the teacher's house that night and try to "explain" why that shouldn't be considered cheating, and really, "My mom has been really sick" isn't enough of an excuse, like just how is that going to fly? It's not. OK, so mistakes happen, you tried something and it didn't work, maybe don't make things worse by knocking the teacher unconscious and tying her to the bed, what is the plan here, exactly? It feels like, "Well, tie her up now and then we'll think of something to do next..."
Well, the kids didn't anticipate the teacher getting inside their heads, they didn't expect the football couch to come over for his regular Tuesday booty call, and they sure didn't think it would be so easy to change their grades, because one teacher in 1999 was still using pencil and paper to report them, and not these newfangled computers that were all the rage - but hey, the threat of Y2K was coming up in a year's time so maybe she was just erring on the side of caution. We all had no idea if the computers were all going to crash and we'd have to start society all over again by living in caves or something.
Look, I hate to call a film "sketchy", but even in a film where people do "bad" things, there need to be repercussions of some sort. These kids get themselves into a spot of trouble, and it takes the absolute most unlikely circumstances to get out of it. But my point is that Leigh Ann DID change her grade using a pencil eraser, and also the grade of the girl who was going to be valedictorian, and that's not cool. Just because Leigh Ann needed the scholarship more, that didn't mean that changing her own grade was OK. Just because Mrs. Tingle had some weird dislike for Leigh Ann, that didn't justify her changing her own grade, either. It's still fraud, or theft, or something, and it's a weird thing to put out into the world.
I couldn't even tell what class Mrs. Tingle taught, was it history? Why did people have to give these weird show-and-tell presentations in history class instead of, you know, learning history from a book? It was all very weird, like some screenwriter just didn't understand how high school works. I know reading books is very boring and not cinematic at all, but it is how learning happens, unless you're Bill & Ted.
That's it for April movies, let's get set up for May - and Mother's Day is on the way, I'm reminded by Mona in "Beautiful" being a mother, and Marge in "Jerry and Marge" was a mother, and today's film had a few brief scenes of Leigh Ann's mother coming home from working as a waitress, so I definitely feel like I'm on a justified track here.
Also starring Helen Mirren (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Katie Holmes (last seen in "Jack and Jill"), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "Phil Spector"), Barry Watson (last seen in "My Future Boyfriend'), Marisa Coughlan (last seen in "Super Troopers 2"), Lesley Ann Warren (last seen in "I Am Michael"), Liz Stauber (last seen in "While We're Young"), Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Vivica A. Fox (last seen in "The Super Bob Einstein Movie"), John Patrick White (last seen in "Can't Hardly Wait"), Harvey Silver.
RATING: 4 out of 10 misuses of the word "ironic"
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