rating:
(out of
4 stars)United States; 1997; made for television
Directed by Jack Bender; co-produced by Chris Young; teleplay by Michael Angeli, Kathleen Rowell
Starring Scott Bairstow, Amy Jo Johnson, Mario López, Chris Young, Jay Thomas, Michelle Williams
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
When I first heard of the movie I thought it was going to be terrible. I saw
it because someone else wanted to see it. In a way I liked it. It was better
than I expected and preparing for the worse helped me to like it a little.
An English teacher, Mr. Griffin, is the kind of teacher you don't like. A
guy named Mark Kinney is one of those guys and he wants to be elected for
the school board or something like that. To get more votes he wants to
kidnap Mr. Griffin, videotape it and make sure Mr. griffin can't do much to
get back at him. A couple of his friends help him, including Susan (Mr.
Griffin's favorite girl), not really a friend, but she is in love with one
of his friends Dave. They kidnap him, go away for a while and when they get
back, Mr. Griffin is dead.
I liked the way the story developed. The ending is not completely
satisfying, but the thing that makes this movie not so good is the choices
made in the story. Choices that will never happen. Mr. Griffin is not a nice
teacher may be, but I had teachers so much worse. We didn't even talk about
them one hour later because, well, they are teachers. In the movie they even
talk about him on a party later that day. And then the ordinary kids who
first don't like the kidnap-plan, but Mr. Griffin is not nice to them once
and they are convinced. I didn't like this and the writers could have done
much better. And the way Mark persuades them to do the things they do. Not
telling anybody comes to mind. These choices are never made in real life. I
know this was a little what I expected, even worse actually, but still it is
a little disappointing knowing it could have been very good.