The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

Crusading Principal/Teacher Movies

The Good:
Lean On Me

The events depicted in the movie, based on the true story of Principal Joe Clark and his crusade to save Eastside High School in Paterson, New Jersey, unfolded when I was still in elementary school. I attended with a largely white, middle-class bunch of Smurf-loving students, for whom drug abuse meant taking extra Flintstones chewable vitamins in the morning while mom had her back turned. Still, my principal at the time was inspired by the heavy-handed antics of Mr. Clark, and he began to overuse his megaphone to belt firm words of encouragement as children sat in the lunchroom, attentively, with their hands folded. I’m not sure if it was due to the stern efforts of my principal, but I can say that there were no shootings or stabbings at my grammar school during the entire time that I attended.

This movie is great, featuring a commanding performance by Morgan Freeman as Clark. The moment the titles begin, to the wailing strains of “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses, you are treated to a high school that resembles a prison more than it does an institution of learning: a girl gets her shirt ripped off in the girl’s bathroom and is fondled in the hallway, a well-dressed drug dealer with a briefcase full of his wares is let into the building through a fire exit, and a teacher has his head beaten against the floor until his eyes roll back into his head and it is splattered with blood. Freeman is called in to bring the school back to code, which he begins by immediately expelling several hundred offending students. The most memorable character, however, is Thomas Sams, a chubby student played by Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins. His best scene is when Freeman takes him up to the high school roof and instructs him to jump, since he’s already ruining his life by smoking crack. Hopkins blubbers, “You can’t kick me outta school, Mister Clark, I can’t tell my mom I got kick’d outta school.” Hip-hop fans will also remember him as the guy who hung out with Queens-based rappers The Lost Boyz, smoking lots of cheeba and probably eating them out of house and home.

The Bad:
The Principal

Sometimes a movie is made that joins two actors, each from difference acting disciplines, and the result is some amazing on-screen chemistry that entertains and delights audiences. This movie does not feature that kind of chemistry. This movie joins Jim Belushi and Louis Gossett, Jr. in a fictional story about their attempt to save a crime-ridden high school from drugs, gangs, and violence. Belushi plays Rick Latimer, a grade school teacher who is “promoted” to principal of the failing Brandel High by his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, who I guess is on the board of education or something. It’s payback to Belushi for kicking his ass in the first scene. Immediately, Belushi teams up with the school’s head of security, played by Lou Gossett, and they tangle with the biggest bad boy in the school, Vic, played by Michael Wright—that’s right, the guy from The Five Heartbeats. So what you’ve got here is a pudgy principal who comes off about as tough as Andy Milonakis, and a bad guy who was still fondly remembered as a reformed thief from the V television miniseries. Belushi sets the pace for this clunky piece of crap, seeming uncomfortable on his motorcycle, unrealistic during drawn-out fight scenes, and awkward when delivering the simplest dialogue. Gossett gives a passionless performance as well. The movie climaxes with a bizarre game of hide and seek between Belushi and Wright in the school shower, which for some reason is divided into various, rusty cubicles and looks more like the de-lousing station at Ellis Island than it does a high school locker room. My high school had very few violence problems, and there weren’t any working showers in the gym. Of course, my high school principal didn’t ride a motorcycle or give impassioned speeches to a disinterested student body, either. This is why New York City has such a low quality of education.

The Mediocre:
Stand and Deliver

This movie I haven’t seen in quite a while, but I did watch it about a dozen times on HBO around 1989. It’s about rebel math teacher Jaime Escalante, well played by Edward James Olmos, and his struggle to escalate the test scores of a bunch of wayward youths from the barrio. Like Lean On Me, this movie was based on a true story, but unlike Lean On Me, it is a story that probably didn’t need to be told on film. I get it, the children are our future and an education is the best defense against adult shiftlessness, but stories like this are a dime a dozen. I know it won all kinds of awards, and it’s a very good movie, but pales next to the others in its genre. Olmos never beats the shit out of anyone, there are no brutal rape scenes, and the students give relatively believable performances. What this movie needed was a climactic showdown between Olmos and a gang leader, fought on motorcycles while whipping chains at each other. Olmos’ comb-over would be flapping wildly in the wind as he screams epithets in Spanish and uses the power of calculus to determine his opponent’s next move. The film also could have used some more comic relief, maybe in the form of Jermaine “Huggy” Hopkins. He does affect a Spanish accent just before a key scene in Lean On Me, when Morgan Freeman listens to he and his cohorts sing an updated, gospel version of the school song in the boy’s bathroom. Someone do the world a favor and upload his rap album, Chunk But Funky on Ichiban Records