Usually, a big indicator that a movie is worth seeing is if Ebert and his partner (Siskel, as it was in 1995) give it "two thumbs up". Most of the time, any studio that releases the movie that gets two thumbs up will rush to print the accolade on the box of the movie when it is released to video. But if it DOESN'T get two thumbs up, there's no need to worry because there is bound to be somebody who has something good to say about a movie.
I mention this because when I rented this movie a long time ago, not one review graced the cover of this train wreck. Not one. I would soon discover why.
when I watched this movie I was 15 years old, so you figure I was part of this movie's target audience. But I can tell you, as a 15-year old kid, I didn't laugh at all. The movie was totally, utterly unfunny.
The story follows a bunch of high school seniors who embark on a trip to Washington, D.C. A grab-bag of mindless high school stereotypes (handsome rebellious guy, anti-social guy, disgusting fat moron, smart goody-two shoes, computer nerd, promiscuous outcast) get thrown into detention and are assigned to write an essay, which will be sent to Washington, explaining the faults in the modern American education system. The smart goody two shoes, Miss Tracy Milford (Valerie Mahaffey) is the only one who actually writes a paper, and wouldn't you know, the President reads it and loves it. Enter the senior trip.
I hoped that at least things would get funny here, as road trip movies usually involve unusual situations/characters. It's cliche, but who cares if it's done well, right? Well, it's not done well here. Kevin McDonald, the only person in this movie I recognized from other projects (aside from Tommy Chong in an amazingly humor-devoid role as the bus driver who is a raging drug addict) plays a weird Star Trek-obsessed crossing guard, who has a personal vendetta against one of the seniors, and chases the group to D.C. Don't ask.
After a series of stupid and endless scenes, we finally end up in D.C., where the President finds out that the group of kids aren't the scholars he thought that they were. This leads to a mercilessly banal, sappy speech from the seniors about how it's too late for them, but not for tomorrow's children, or something smiliar. I can believe that one could be convinced that public education is in bad shape by parading these kids around, but I can't believe that the response solicited from such a display would be the ever popular 'slow clap', started by the President himself. After that, the movie somehow ends, but not soon enough.
I identified with none of the characters portrayed in the movie. Even Tracy Milford, who at one point looked like she was above the rest of the crew, totally betrayed me when it was revealed that she had feelings for Mark "Dags" D'Agastino (Jeremy Remner, the "star" of the movie), a punk that no girl of intelligence or ambition could ever find attractive. While most teen comedies have outlandish characters, there is always at least a grain of truth to them. I was spoon-fed a series of what looked like an out-of-touch writer's uneducated guess of what they thought high school kids were. So awful was this movie that some seven years after viewing it I can still recall it well enough to review it. Most bad movies I hope to never see again. This is the kind of bad movie I hope to repress.
National Lampoon's Senior Trip: Zero stars (out of four)
I mention this because when I rented this movie a long time ago, not one review graced the cover of this train wreck. Not one. I would soon discover why.
when I watched this movie I was 15 years old, so you figure I was part of this movie's target audience. But I can tell you, as a 15-year old kid, I didn't laugh at all. The movie was totally, utterly unfunny.
The story follows a bunch of high school seniors who embark on a trip to Washington, D.C. A grab-bag of mindless high school stereotypes (handsome rebellious guy, anti-social guy, disgusting fat moron, smart goody-two shoes, computer nerd, promiscuous outcast) get thrown into detention and are assigned to write an essay, which will be sent to Washington, explaining the faults in the modern American education system. The smart goody two shoes, Miss Tracy Milford (Valerie Mahaffey) is the only one who actually writes a paper, and wouldn't you know, the President reads it and loves it. Enter the senior trip.
I hoped that at least things would get funny here, as road trip movies usually involve unusual situations/characters. It's cliche, but who cares if it's done well, right? Well, it's not done well here. Kevin McDonald, the only person in this movie I recognized from other projects (aside from Tommy Chong in an amazingly humor-devoid role as the bus driver who is a raging drug addict) plays a weird Star Trek-obsessed crossing guard, who has a personal vendetta against one of the seniors, and chases the group to D.C. Don't ask.
After a series of stupid and endless scenes, we finally end up in D.C., where the President finds out that the group of kids aren't the scholars he thought that they were. This leads to a mercilessly banal, sappy speech from the seniors about how it's too late for them, but not for tomorrow's children, or something smiliar. I can believe that one could be convinced that public education is in bad shape by parading these kids around, but I can't believe that the response solicited from such a display would be the ever popular 'slow clap', started by the President himself. After that, the movie somehow ends, but not soon enough.
I identified with none of the characters portrayed in the movie. Even Tracy Milford, who at one point looked like she was above the rest of the crew, totally betrayed me when it was revealed that she had feelings for Mark "Dags" D'Agastino (Jeremy Remner, the "star" of the movie), a punk that no girl of intelligence or ambition could ever find attractive. While most teen comedies have outlandish characters, there is always at least a grain of truth to them. I was spoon-fed a series of what looked like an out-of-touch writer's uneducated guess of what they thought high school kids were. So awful was this movie that some seven years after viewing it I can still recall it well enough to review it. Most bad movies I hope to never see again. This is the kind of bad movie I hope to repress.
National Lampoon's Senior Trip: Zero stars (out of four)