I remember being in 5th grade when my teacher brought this video tape to class. She told the class "For the next hour and ten minutes (may have been an hour and twenty)you're going to be watching a movie about saying no to drugs. This movie is about getting the courage to stand up to your friends and tell them that 'NO' you don't have to take drugs to be cool and you don't want them". Well, at the time the biggest thing to us fifth graders were IN LIVING COLOR and TALES FROM THE CRYPT which was chocked full of unwholesome stuff, so we really weren't all about this movie from the start.
When our teacher, Mrs. Asfazadour put this video in from the start it looked as if someone shot the video on their home camera. I don't even recall any credits. The movie revolved around some teenage girl who's friend is starting to hang out around the wrong people (people who do drugs) and she doesn't know what to do to get her friend out of the predicament of needing to do drugs to look cool in front of the popular kids in high school. throughout the movie every time she sees her friend on drugs she's doing something really strange (well strange to a bunch of 10 year olds but now that i'm 24 isn't so strange)like using a dog collar as a choker, or taking her bangs and dying them red, or taking kittie colars and turning them into punk rock bracelets. The friend in trouble is an overweight chola looking girl who has no self confidence until she meets these people that seem cool to her but do drugs. she starts getting all punk rocked out, but the movie makes this seem as though it's this hugely evil thing, which is why her friend is going through all of these emotions of not knowing what to do for her friend. the plot of the movie is basically this: a teenage girl is having issues in her own head because she can't deal with peer pressure. about 65 percent of the production is this girl singing and singing and moving around talking about situations that are hard. the songs are horribly bad pop songs that sound as though they were made up as they were recorded. The only real thing that i remember about the movie is the lead sings a song where the lyrics are "don't say yes, when you really really really really, really really really really mean 'no'" in which she's in a really cloudy dream sequence where she's a contestant on a game show.
this is pretty bad, but gets the point across that "yes, you can say 'no' to drugs and stand up to people that you know". I remember that about 30 minutes through the movie every time that another song would start back up with the character singing, the entire class would groan. when the movie was over and the teacher asked what the class learned from the movie, the anonymous vote was "don't say yes when you really mean no" to drugs. Now that i think back on it, one of the dream sequences might have been her just being high and trippin' out 'cause she's high for the first time.
This movie to me seems like propaganda that goes far beyond no drugs. it seems to me that the message was that if you wear black, or dye your hair, or wear punk bracelets, or listen to hard rock and wear dark makeup that you are evil and that you must be on drugs because only drugs can make that kind of person. I think that the main character also asked a higher power or something to help her make decisions, but i'm not entirely sure, since this was 15 years ago. It was a terrible movie, that was shot on home video, had really bad acting, and really bad sound but had a really catchy song that i sometimes remember at random times throughout my life (don't say yes when you really mean no") and get struck in my head.
