Avis Metacritic

The Naked Gun writing team and actor-turned-director Hart Bochner do unto the stereotype of inner-city high schools what needs to be done to stereotyped inner-city high schools -- parody them silly -- in this high-flying, low-comedy production.

Stupid yet cogent, High School High is a rapid-fire gag machine that's dopey enough to get belly laughs and smart enough to earn a C-plus as engaging entertainment.

Like a student who studies hard but just doesn't have the smarts, this joyless send-up of the "Dangerous Minds," "Stand and Deliver," idealistic-teacher-in-a-ghetto-school genre plods along earnestly with barely passing grades.

There's not much sense to the plot. But the film makers' blunderbuss approach to humor, with visual and verbal jokes coming in profusion and scattering high and low, guarantees that just about every funnybone is bound to be hit, some more than once.

The movie makes two mistakes: (1) It isn't very funny, and (2) it makes the crucial error of taking its story seriously and angling for a happy ending.

Lovitz is occasionally amusing, especially in his creative attempts to get through to his pupils, although his style of slow-take humor is a grave mismatch for this kind of frenzied comedy.

The laugh lines are mostly crude and the prevalent slapstick is weak and uneventful.

Isn't just bad, it's very bad.

Face it. Parody comedies are no longer a laughing matter. [25 October 1996, p.5D]

Louise Fletcher is a walking sight gag as the evil principal, but just about every other gag falls flat and lies there, wheezing.