Lower Learning

Well, a waste of Cordry, at least. I really wish the writers and editors hadn't been lazy for this film, it coulda been funny. It was fimed well but thats not saying much when the material was lacking. It was a series of throwaway dark skits. Like, maybe, a bunch of deleted Upright Citizen Brigade scenes, not quite ready for the big show. A lot of the little story ideas were good but when they were put together for a full length film, they just didn't seem to work. Try again, writer/director guy, but this time, maybe write a better outline and make sure you know what you want the the audience to feel and, most of all, write BETTER jokes.

"Lower Learning" is one of those annoying movies that thinks it's so much more clever than it actually is. The kind of movie that thinks every single line of dialogue is supposed to be a Tarantino-like one-liner that people will be repeating for the next couple of decades, we'll figure out less important stuff like plot and characters later on. Well, guess what: Mark Lafferty isn't quite Tarantino, and everything about this movie is so laughably forced that it almost becomes unwatchable. How long did it take these people to even find actors willing to utter lines like "we have to be as quiet as a fairy fart"? Honestly, just let that line sink in for a while. If that made the final script, I don't even want to think about what lines might have been cut (if any). If you can't write a decent line of dialogue to save your life, you probably shouldn't transform more than half of the scenes into long conversations that barely have anything to do with the actual story. Through the power of trial and error the movie does occasionally stumble into a territory where it's almost good (the "they get detention!" scene has a peculiar charm to it), but these moments are way too few and far apart to make me stop hating this movie. Garbage.

OK, it is not "dead poets society" or "good will hunting". It is in reality much more like "police academy" for schools. That being said, don't expect high brow humor and you will be pleased. I went in with low expectations because it is a Jason Biggs film, and i was thoroughly pleased. The supporting cast his hilarious! They make the film. Eva Longoria Parker is great, as is Monica Potter. The cast is wonderful as burned out teachers, and the kids are great in their roles both as victims and as accessories. Another special standout in the film is the principle, Rob Corddry. He is hilarious as the sleazy con artist. It is worth your time, just don't expect high brow comedy.

If you really like Will Ferrell or Monty Python, you stand a very good chance of enjoying this ridiculous, subversive, offensive movie, which is much more original than mainstream Hollywood comedies such as Bad Teacher, and has to do with schools about as much as Scary Movie 3 had to do with crop circles. The Corddry role was written with him in mind and is the most consistently amusing thing I've seen him in. He's such a villainous school principal that he doesn't just have some lobster delivered on the taxpayer's dime, he revels in tearing apart the lobster suggestively and rather randomly while confusing Eva Longoria's character as to what he might be suggesting. Biggs is an ostensible good guy, although too apathetic to mind having a boy walk the railroad tracks for hours, again, as punishment for pouring gravy on another student. (But "where did you get gravy at nine o'clock in the morning," he wonders, and the kid just shrugs, exactly as that kid would, and moving on....) People tend to suck a lot, pretty much of all us, and this movie makes fun of people for it, relentlessly and mostly creatively.

With 2 big names (Eva Longoria and Jason Biggs) playing leading roles in a satirical film about failing education; this film aimed to hit the higher targets. Yet, through a series of dead-end, awkward jokes and innuendos; this film failed to even meet the lower targets.

This film only gains any credibility through the children's credible and compelling performances. Perhaps this film would have been better with an entirely child based crew working on its production…like a more updated idea of 'Bugsy Malone'.

Regardless; the plot lacked sequence and organisation, much of the acting was frightful at best and the incongruous plot holes allow me to rate this as the worst film I have ever watched.

Lower Learning is as titled, lower learning.