Reviews

I cannot believe how this movie could have gotten such a high rating from so many critics and being called one of the cream movies of the 80's. Were people stupid and cliché back then?

The story moves around five stereotypical teens at a high school in America who got a whole day detention, and their task is to write an essay about who they think they are. Here we have the athlete, good looking guy who bullies others to please his dad. The prom queen lady who is afraid of being called a bitch or a slut and therefore avoids talking about her virginity. The little nerd who brags about his good grades and tries to fit into the group all the time. The anarchistic bully who doesn't care about anything and just messes around to have some fun. And last but not least the quiet and introvert emo-girl who shows off her weirdness by eating a sandwich buttered with sugar and unboiled pasta. Seriously??

More than half of the movie is about that bully guy who can't stop gathering attention by messing around, picking fights, yelling mean things at each and everyone of the other students in order to find their weak mental points. Everything culminates in all of them sitting in a ring together, smoking pot and becoming best friends by whining about how more miserable their lives are compared to others. Okay, up to that part, I can still squeeze out enough energy to believe in the plots' realism.

But what really went on my nerves is how that bully guy can be as mean as he wants to be and everybody follows him regardless, going down the hallway to get some drugs from his locker, sitting around smoking, talking about their parents and their miserable lives. And no matter HOW nice everyone is and shows him that he is understood and that nobody wants him any harm, but rather help him, he continues to be mean and hurtful toward others. He is at his worst against the prom queen girl who just doesn't want to admit that she is still a virgin, because she is too afraid of the others opinion. He throws sexist comments at her all the time and makes her cry and break down at last. I became so furious at the movie because NOBODY tries to tell him that he doesn't have to be mean all the time, just because he has a hard home life.

The worst part starts at the very last ten minutes of the movie. Now after the quarrel in the group ring has reached its limit, the teens put on some music and dance like there's no tomorrow. Everybody is friends with each other right now, despite that they fought and hurt each other just a minute ago. The essay that everybody has to hand in is for the smart nerd to write, all five of them. Because "he is the smart one", as the athlete boy describes it. Meanwhile, the prom queen is giving the weird girl a makeup lift, and suddenly the athlete has eyes for her and falls immediately in love with her and she with him, so they end up becoming a kissing couple in the last three minutes. Same goes for the prom queen who starts to kiss the bully and asks him to be her boyfriend. The movie ends with their teacher reading the nerds essay which reads that nobody really can know who they really are because everybody just sees others as they want to see them. The end.

I was really disappointed at the end. Because the movie showed such interesting potential when everybody was explaining their hardship to each others in their own ways. It was interesting to observe how they would react to and bound with each other once they would realize that they all had problems and were different than what they appeared to be. But after that happened, it just went downhill. You can't expect the audience to believe that two people can fall in love with each other after a makeup or after one treated the other like crap the whole day. It doesn't make for a believable end and that is what made the movie become very disappointing. There were many open questions left unanswered, like how next Monday would be when they would see each other at school again and stop "being friends".

I wished the writers would have considered such things to make the movie more realistic instead of more appealing to the target audience.

I wanted to watch this movie because I got the impression that it could be a new kind of "High School Rock" or something similar. Simply a "bad" teacher who discovers that she really wants to do something good for her students and actually helps them in getting good grades and self-esteem. But unfortunately, there is NOTHING of that in that movie!

I don't even know how to begin my review of how bad this movie is. The only good thing about it is the cast: Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake, Jason Segal, Lucy Punch, Phyllis Smith... This movie almost SCREAMS for wanting to be a big funny comedy! The cast, including Diaz, is doing an amazing job fitting their roles. Especially Timberlake, who is showing a rather odd kind of roll as the hot hipster new age idiot. But nonetheless, all their effort doesn't save this movie from falling on its knees.

Because this movie gets nothing right. The jokes are harsh, nasty, dirty and political incorrect. Some may find them interesting and funny because of that fact. I just find them typically MTV-generation bad. The story and the pace in which the film develops are horrible too! It starts out by introducing how "bad" of a teacher Diaz is. She clearly shows that she has no interest in her students and their future, lets them watch only movies each day and forces them to do national tests without them having learned anything. And when the students fail (of course), she yells and threatens them to do a better job. And what's more, because threats don't work either, she lets them stand in line at the gymnasium and throws basketballs at each kids face if the kid doesn't answer correctly to one of her questions. Seriously?? What is this movie telling us? That the education system in the US is messed up or that you can teach students better with corporal punishment? All that attitude is so unrealistic, you wonder how she got her teachers' license in the first place.

But sadly, Diaz is never getting away from her attitude. She is never really growing or changing in that movie. She sleeps, drinks, smokes, steals, takes drugs, is violent, cynical, lies and betrays all people around her. And gets always away with it. Right from the beginning of the movie until the end. What's worse, she even gets a colleague of hers to be forced to move to another school AND gets the guy in the end who was chasing her through the movie the entire time. Wonder what he sees in her?

There are only two scenes in the movie where you think that Diaz finally will change, or at least show her "real" nice self. The first one is when she is smoking pod in her car and one of her students is giving her home baked cookies. For the brink of a second, Diaz is softening up and gives her student the advice to loosen up a little ("stop acting like you're racing for congress"). But she immediately finishes with "You're hopeless, kid." The other scene is after one of the boys in her class openly confesses his love to his crush, gets rejected and runs away in his misery. Diaz chases him, and when they finally sit down to talk about what happened, she repeats herself: "I told you so many times, a guy like you will NEVER get a girl like her. Take that ugly hat off your face!"

I became so frustrated by those small moments when it seems like Diaz finally will show us her nice self, only to prove once more what kind of a sad and mean psycho she really is. This movie gives you nothing and is not rewarding to watch in any way. You will get no interesting story, no plot twists, no philosophical depth, no moral message, no happy ending. It's really one of these movies where you have to ask yourself how the script got past the producing rights in the first place. I can simply not recommend this movie to anyone.

This must be one of the worst Kung Fu fighting movies I have ever seen. I decided to first watch Bruce Lees first movie (The big boss), which was laughably horrible (dogs jumping through the air and stuff). So then I wanted to see Lee's debut movie, Way of the dragon aka Return of the Dragon. I read on rottentomatoes.com that it actually was Lee's best movie, so I had great hopes on that one. But after watching this one I am badly disappointed.

The Story is about the Chinese fighter Tang Lung (Bruce Lee) who comes to Rome to help out at a restaurant of a friend of him. The owner of the place, a young girl, is threatened by a syndicate which wants to buy the restaurant at all costs. Lung on the other hand is prepared to lend a hand by dealing with these thugs "his way". That's the story in a nutshell until Lung faces Chuck Norris in a last battle in the Colliseum of Rome.

I have difficulties to believe reviews that say that this is the best Kung Fu movie ever made. Because its got nothing worth seeing except for Lee's funny battle with two nun-chucks. The rest seems just questionably wrong. It starts off with Lee waiting at the airport while being constantly watched by an elderly women. Then he goes to a café to order food, but he can't even tell the waitress that he wants some eggs, although he speaks perfectly good English afterward in the rest of the movie. The peek of awkwardness comes of Lee asking at least three times in the movie where the toilet is. In the beginning I thought this rather to be a Jackie Chan comedy than a Bruce Lee Kung Fu movie. Oh yeah, he also asks the girl later if it was possible to buy a gun and she replies: "Oh yes, of course, everyone can buy a gun here!"

Say what now? That is Italy in the 1970's! Since when can anyone, yet alone tourists just buy a gun? What's more is that he never really goes to buy a gun. Instead he is making small darts out of light wood, which he later throws with high accuracy into the wrists of people being 5-15 meters away. Have you ever had a 10 cm stick in your hand? Even if you could lift 50 kg, you could never toss a stick like that further than 2 meters, yet alone pierce someones bone with them!

Another example is that none of these gangsters that threaten the restaurant seems to be Italian. They've got blacks, Indians, Japanese and white Americans except for that one fat dude who screams Mamma Mia in one scene.

At one other time the boss of the gang commands his underlings to take Lee outside of the restaurant to deal with him, but reminds them to be careful with the guns because of the open public. But every time they go "outside" of the restaurant in this movie, they go to the back ally behind the building where they are surrounded by 2 meter walls, so nobody can see them anyway! And when Lee finally finishes beating them up, the gang leader hires a Hit-man to snipe Lee down at night. But for some reason he is polite enough to send a message to the restaurant beforehand, placed inside a little nice coffin... What makes the situation worse is that the girl wants to protect Lee from being shot and recommends him over and over again to leave Rome at once, but for some reason never really tells him exactly why and that he will be killed if he doesn't leave.

Another weird example is when the gangs' Japanese henchman is calling the worlds best fighter, who for some reason is an American. And he even tells the exchange through the telephone "Give me America. Yes, you heard me right, America!" WTF??? Then Lee and his restaurant friends have a big fight in the open area against an European and a Japanese karate fighter. But after Lee is done beating up the Japanese guy, his friends grab each of his arms and keep kicking him until he is... dead? I don't know, but that surely isn't what Kung Fu is all about. Lees master Yip Man would turn around in his grave if you would see this movie today. The weirdest plot twist occurs when the chef of the restaurant is stabbing Lees friends in the back only because he suddenly remembers that he wants to go back to Hong Kong. But that twist is never really further explained in the rest of the movie.

The fight between Lee and Chuck Norris is a joke. Before they meet, Lee is running around for like 5 minutes in the whole damn Colliseum before they meet in some corridor. Then they face each other, stripping off their clothes to show their bare muscular bodies (but only showing Norris harry mess of a body). To make the audience wait even longer, they start warming up for about 5 more minutes. Then they start fighting and about 5 minutes later, Lee is breaking Norries neck and even seems regretting it all of a sudden. What the hell??

I didn't like this movie. The only two scenes I really liked was the one with the fat guy screaming Mamma Mia and the one where Lee is holding his quivering two fists and weaving is forefinger in front of the gang leader just to say "No, no, no, you don't to that again". It's funny because the exact same scene is shown in the modern movie Kung Fu Hustle. Otherwise, this movie is a disappointment. I will watch the rest of his movies but I have no big expectations anymore. I give this movie 2 of 10.