Lower Learning

Not wanting to sound as if I'm infringing your god given right to your First Amendment, I want to let you know that you may watch this film, but it's better if you find something else to watch (or do) instead. This film is just isn't worth your precious time.

The cast is star studded, but it didn't make the film enjoyable. With poor storyline, poor execution, and poor (or rather, non-existent) acting from the cast, this film is destined to be a disaster.

With figures of around $2m of budget, one would think that the film can be something better, but unfortunately it was not the case. I went through the thread discussion and found out that they'd have to sell heaps of DVDs to recover the cost. And based on how things go, I do not think they can ever break-even.

The only saving grace is Biggs, who have changed his character from being a nutter in his previous films, to somebody who can give substance and impact to the film. No more is he only known as the guy who f**ked a pizza.

As for Eva Longoria, I think she acted better in her previous film (Over Her Dead Body), and I hope she chooses her character carefully before committing herself.

All in all, not the best film around, and not a good film, as the film is aptly called.

OK, it is not "dead poets society" or "good will hunting". It is in reality much more like "police academy" for schools. That being said, don't expect high brow humor and you will be pleased. I went in with low expectations because it is a Jason Biggs film, and i was thoroughly pleased. The supporting cast his hilarious! They make the film. Eva Longoria Parker is great, as is Monica Potter. The cast is wonderful as burned out teachers, and the kids are great in their roles both as victims and as accessories. Another special standout in the film is the principle, Rob Corddry. He is hilarious as the sleazy con artist. It is worth your time, just don't expect high brow comedy.

If you really like Will Ferrell or Monty Python, you stand a very good chance of enjoying this ridiculous, subversive, offensive movie, which is much more original than mainstream Hollywood comedies such as Bad Teacher, and has to do with schools about as much as Scary Movie 3 had to do with crop circles. The Corddry role was written with him in mind and is the most consistently amusing thing I've seen him in. He's such a villainous school principal that he doesn't just have some lobster delivered on the taxpayer's dime, he revels in tearing apart the lobster suggestively and rather randomly while confusing Eva Longoria's character as to what he might be suggesting. Biggs is an ostensible good guy, although too apathetic to mind having a boy walk the railroad tracks for hours, again, as punishment for pouring gravy on another student. (But "where did you get gravy at nine o'clock in the morning," he wonders, and the kid just shrugs, exactly as that kid would, and moving on....) People tend to suck a lot, pretty much of all us, and this movie makes fun of people for it, relentlessly and mostly creatively.

How do you have a cast like this and manage to cause a smirk or two during the whole thing? Did these actors owe someone a favor? Was it an "in" joke? Was it an April fools day prank? What happened here?????

"Lower Learning" is one of those annoying movies that thinks it's so much more clever than it actually is. The kind of movie that thinks every single line of dialogue is supposed to be a Tarantino-like one-liner that people will be repeating for the next couple of decades, we'll figure out less important stuff like plot and characters later on. Well, guess what: Mark Lafferty isn't quite Tarantino, and everything about this movie is so laughably forced that it almost becomes unwatchable. How long did it take these people to even find actors willing to utter lines like "we have to be as quiet as a fairy fart"? Honestly, just let that line sink in for a while. If that made the final script, I don't even want to think about what lines might have been cut (if any). If you can't write a decent line of dialogue to save your life, you probably shouldn't transform more than half of the scenes into long conversations that barely have anything to do with the actual story. Through the power of trial and error the movie does occasionally stumble into a territory where it's almost good (the "they get detention!" scene has a peculiar charm to it), but these moments are way too few and far apart to make me stop hating this movie. Garbage.