As a Patrick Dempsey fan, I picked up this movie. Only, Dempsey is hardly in it, and barely has dialogue. It turned out to be a pretty funny little movie about the trials and tribulations of five Catholic School Boys at St. Basils in the 1960s.
Our central character is Michael Dunn (Andrew McCarthy), who is new to St. Basils and has yet to learn of it's sadistic rituals and largely paranoid and overbearing Brothers. Dunn makes friends with self-proclaimed genius, Caesar (Malcolm Danare) who's self-gratification can be quite annoying.
Dunn and Caesar eventually join forces with underachiever, Rudy (Kevin Dillon), quiet Corbet (a very young Patrick Dempsey), and the horny kid, Williams (Stephen Geoffreys). As such, the five of them get into their fair share of trouble and adolescent antics at St. Basils, which makes for some pretty funny sequences.
Mary Stuart Masterson costars as Dunn's girlfriend who runs the soda fountain, a sanctuary to the Catholic School students where they can smoke and cuss and whatever without fearing sanctions from the Brother. She's basically just a nice girl trying to get by and seems like a good match for Dunn.
Donald Sutherland plays the rather lackluster headmaster at the school. Wallace Shawn has a small role as the paranoid Brother who fears the potential of the horny student body (just listen to his dumb speech at the dance), and John Heard has a good part as the laidback Brother who seems to be the only buffer between the Brothers and the students.
Despite Andrew McCarthy being emphasized as the main character, the whole movie is really Rudy (Kevin Dillon)who has the bulk of funny dialogue and dumb ideas and without which, would probably be just another 'blah' movie. McCarthy's character alone is not all that interesting, and so they needed something to play off of that. And that's what Dillon's character is there for. And it works so well, he basically is the whole movie.
I recommend picking up this one if you get a chance, especially if you really like 80s movies.
