The Chaos Class Failed the Class

I found this movie because of its listing in the IMDB Top 250 and had the opportunity to watch a restored version on YouTube. I also watched its immediate predecessor Chaos Class (Hababam Sinifi) for additional context due to my limited exposure to Turkish films and culture.

In the original, a new vice-principal, Mahmut, arrives at a private Istanbul high school. The twist in this sequel is the arrival of a female literature teacher, Semra, a recent university graduate. The movie largely focuses on their interactions with a group of over-aged students known collectively in the translation as the Rascals.

The high school is more of a boarding school, with the parents largely absent. It is a gated boarding school, where students are expected to remain onsite at most times. The Rascals, in spite of being "high school" students are mostly in their mid-20s, but generally behave like adolescents (hence their designation as the chaos class, which might also have broadly applied to their post-war generation). They spend most of their time scheming pranks and cheats.

Mahmut is a late-career educator. In the earlier Chaos Class, he had been introduced to the Rascals and had earned a level of respect from them for his nuanced handling of their discipline. The other teachers are more easily manipulated by the Rascals, and the green new hire Semra proves particularly gullible to their schemes. There is also an older female staff member named Hafize, who sometimes abets the Rascals in their pranks.

The Rascals push the boundaries of good behavior with each other, particularly with one Rascal nicknamed Cow, but mostly with the adult authorities. How Mahmut and the faculty respond here and to the pranks in general is as integral to the movie as the pranks themselves.

The Chaos Class films do not descend into the full out raunchiness of a film like Animal House, but rather hearken back more to the contemporaneous US tv series "Welcome Back Kotter," with the Rascals standing in for Kotter's sweathogs.

Unlike Kotter, Mahmut is older and does not come from the same background as the students. Like Kotter, though, he earns the students' respect and ties the story together. To a degree, he may also represent the older generation facing the "generation gap" with the young adults of the 1970s.

Does this movie, or any Chaos Class movie, belong on a list of the 250 best films ever made? In short, probably not. However, it will do little harm to spend an hour and a half watching it. If you are a fan of Kotter or Animal House, you will likely enjoy it, and I could certainly see Turkish viewers finding a certain nostalgic pleasure in rewatching it.

Jesus Christ this movie was physically painful to watch.

I'm not from Turkey, neither I had ever heard about Hababam series before, but this being in Top 250 made me watch it. And I hated and regret every second I was doing that.

If THIS was considered funny at any point in a history of Turkey film industry, I... kinda have nothing to say without sounding too offensive.

I wish this 10-stars flash mob had never happened.

Simply the greatest and most well known movie in Turkey...

I have watch this movie and its series over 100 times and still think there is no movie to beat this movie.. Yet, you have to be real close to Turkish language and mostly the culture to understand the jokes and dialogues..

I had this movie on my radar since it was (recently) #124 in the IMDbTop 250. I've seen all of the top 125 except for 3 others. These "top" movies are from many cultures and in many languages but this is one of the worst I've ever seen. It's from 1975 so maybe it brings back fond memories for people in the Turkish community (there appear to be other movies in this vein). I'm guessing there might have been an online effort to boost its IMDb rating.

I hope this doesn't offend people who truly like this film, but I see nothing positive about its impact on humanity. On the negative side: the "high school student" male actors average age (at production time) is probably 32-40+ while the two female actors are age appropriate with the teacher actress a beautiful young twenty-something. Overall, the humor was extremely childish and, with the elderly students, seemed truly immature and boorish. It seemed to be a poorly edited sequence of skits with no real purpose. The behavior towards the new teacher (by students and staff) is inexcusable, even for the mid-70s.

Unless you are really into this cultural genre or have some desired historical "need" for this movie, I recommend skipping it altogether.

Before I start, a little background info; The Hababam series were (are) repeated so many times on television that it has become known to everyone in Turkey. In fact, the comedy's from the 70's made a major impact in the following Turkish comedy history.

Shortly the movie is about a class of slackers, all boys who don't study and are constantly trying to do all kinds of pranks or trying to escape out of the dormitory etc. In this Hababam the whole class actually fails the exams, and the school is threatened to be closed.

Compared to western standards this movie can be seen as a normal family comedy, but the thing what makes it really good is the individual contribution/improvisation of the various actors (whom became one of the greatest of the Turkish comedy history). There is given some decent amount of freedom to the actors to give their own flavor to it. And I think the actors did an excellent job doing this, especially Kemal Sunal and Sener Sen, because of this there are a lot of small very funny scenes throughout the whole movie, which made the movie very enjoyable, rich and therefore re-watchable.

This movie in particular has something special to it, not only because most people watched this movie over and over since their childhood, but also because of the jokes and it also gets a bit more serious in the end. I think this movie is rooted deep to a lot of people, and each time when you watch it this movie brings back nice memories.