Detention

I have to admit that this did not turn out to be what I expected it to be. It was actually better. The script is well done and provides enough substance to make it worth watching. For the most part it is a believable story. The acting is not bad for the relatively unknown cast. If you are looking for something different, this is it.

The advance reviews of writer & director Andy Anderson's Detention prepared me for a '90s version of To Sir with Love, and indeed, the first part of this film is along that line, except that now we have not only uncontrollable kids but an adminstration that has lost the will and the power to do anything about them. The teachers are bound by political correctness, a starvation budget, fear of lawsuits, and a thousand other plagues on the education system. Even Sidney Poitier would be helpless were he bound this tightly by a legal system gone mad.

I kept waiting for Bill Walmsley, the hero teacher of this movie, confidently played by John Davies, to work the Stand and Deliver miracle, but it doesn't come, and the movie slows, when suddenly Walmsley tries an approach that rips the conventions right out from under this movie. No, this isn't To Sir with Love or Stand and Deliver or even The Dead Poets Society. Yet in one fell swoop, the movie becomes darkly funny while raising some serious questions about how difficult public education is in a world run by lawyers. It's a sure sign of how crazy the education system has become when the craziest arguments for reform make the most sense I've heard in years.

In the opening scene of this dark satire, a panning camera finds a man sitting alone in a room of fading photographs and antiques. A telephone rings. He picks it up just as men sent to take him to a mental institution are knocking at his door. His choice, to take a job as a substitute teacher, sets off an intriguing and provocative tale that takes us through deft riffs on Clockwork Orange, Blackboard Jungle, Heart of Darkness, Kafka, and Jonathan Swift, and I am not just dropping names; a meaningful discussion of this complex film would include all of these influences. What appears to be a conventional, yet both disturbing and comic, story about an idealistic instructor's attempts to reform wayward youth takes a startling turn and confronts the viewer with questions of the basic worth of human selfhood and dignity. Anyone concluding that the film espouses a certain "solution" should look for the irony and keep in mind that the director himself referenced Swift's "Modest Proposal" at a recent post-screening discussion. General release in August

With his latest film, Andy Anderson proves once again that an engaging, entertaining movie can be made on a modest budget. Mainstream Hollywood movies have become increasingly predictable, but not Anderson's work. He swims in his own private river where quirkiness and surprises abound.

Is DETENTION a comedy? Black comedy? Social drama? Thriller? Don't even attempt to apply a label until you've watched this movie to the very end. This is part of the film's allure. It can't be categorized by genre.

DETENTION is a unique, satisfying film. It takes the viewer on a thought-provoking, thrill ride that won't soon be forgotten.

A hilarious satire of contemporary education and today's coddled youth, this little-seen comedy rates as a real triumph for writer/director Anderson (whose "Positive ID" was pretty terrific, too).

Good luck finding it, though -- after some festivals, it's kind of disappeared.