MAKING THE GRADE

US, 1984, 105 minutes, Colour.
Judd Nelson, Jonna Lee, Ronald Lacey, Andrew Dice Clay.
Directed by Dorian Walker.

Making the Grade is yet another early teenage film relying on the popular impact of such films as Porky's. Once again, it is teenage-oriented. It also has the high school setting with sexual hijinks.

However this film, is better than most. While it does have various ingredients and vulgarities from Porky's, it is not quite as crude as the other films. It also seems to steal quite flagrantly from Trading Places. Some hard rock scenes and some breakdancing, are also inserted for popular consumption.

The basic plot concerns a ne'er-do-well wealthy student looking for a substitute to take his place at college and get his diploma. A street kid on the run from money collectors takes the job. This leads to romance in school, but it also leads to a number of farcical situations and cover-ups. There are humorous scenes amongst the students, and the head of the school. Needless to say the substitute hero falls in love with the granddaughter of the school's founder. There is an irony, how ever, that as the year goes on the street kid 'becomes' a really inverted snob, alienating the heroine and poking fun at people transformed by wealth and situations and becoming pretentious. All is revealed at the end with hero and heroine going, off in a sports car with the promise that there
would he a sequel.

The film comes from the Cannon Group, popular exploiters of any trend in the 80s. The lead, Judd Nelson, went on to some better films.