Senior Week

Granted this is no cinematic masterpiece, but sometimes I like stupid movies. This is one of those classic 80's movies that's fun to watch after midnight. If you like movies like, State Park, Loose Screws, The Allnighter, One Crazy Summer, etc. you'll probbly like this.

Remember that scene in "A Clockwork Orange" where Malcolm McDowell's character stares at the movie screen in absolute horror and pain, unable to turn away? That was how I felt watching this movie. Even the occasional topless bimbo cannot make this movie watchable. Honestly, I can't see anyone watching this in full from beginning to end, unless you are a sadomasochist like myself. Well I have already wasted more electrons typing review than this movie is worth.

Senior Week was on here late night around two years ago and it's all coming back to me. It's another one of those horny teenager films of the 80s in the grand tradition of Porkys and Screwballs. I can't remember much except for these dudes going away for the weekend and one of them has some English essay to write. What they hoped would be a weekend of sun and fun gets interrupted with the arrival of the English teacher fish-hag woman herself. I don't know why she bothered going there, but I do recall some inane scene involving a ketchup fight between her and the proprietors of the local milk bar. I pray this is the right movie.

If it's at the video store, check it out.. pretty much a horny teen film with some weird sexual fantasy scenes - Was that shaving cream or whipped cream?

5/10

My review was written in August 1988 after watching the movie on Vestron video cassette.

"Senior Week" is a ho-hum video release in the overworked teen comedy genre. It ads little more to the field than documenting the shift of Florida spring break from Fort Lauderdale to Daytona Beach.

Michael St. Gerard leads a quartet of New Jersey students at Nixon High School who head to the Sunshine State on the week before graduation. Overworked and uninteresting plot hook has him forcing classmate Gary Kerr to write his term paper, required by a mean teacher (Barbara Gruen, overacting horrendously), or our hero won't graduate.

In the wake of "Porky's" and scores of imitations, the antics here are very tame, padded out by extraneous dream sequences featuring girls going topless. Complications engendered when teach and the guys' girlfriend pursue the quartet to Florida are strictly mechanical.

Cast handles the script's stereotypes (nerd, fatso,etc.) with enthusiasm. Biggest letdown is that the hero's extremely beautiful dream girl (Jaynie Poteet) is given nothing to do and minimal screen time. Tech credits are okay.

"Senior Week" is not as good as "Animal House", but it's still not worse than the millions of rip-offs that it spawned.

It's just...equal.

Okay, St. Gerard (all hair, no brains) is a loser student who has to get a term paper done so that he can graduate but he also HAS TO go to Ft. Lauderdale for a weekend of drink and debauchery. So he does what any right-thinking young man would do: he hops in a car with a fat slob and the school nerd and high-tails it to Florida and makes the nerd write his paper while he and the slob cruise the beaches.

Okay, you've probably seen this one before and you can probably see the jokes coming down Main Street with a bright red flasher blinking on them. There's rampant female nudity, lunk-headed guys and adults as bright as a cord of firewood, just like in all the rest of this film's ilk. So, what makes this one more worthy of a review than the others?

Well, mainly, the nerd gets a pretty cool girl for himself.

That's the only redeeming factor, but hey, nerds are people, too.

Two stars. One for the nerd and one for his girlfriend.