Summer school is, in a word, awesome. The story is simple enough to follow and doesn’t really challenge anyone, but it doesn’t need to. If you watch it with the realization that you won’t need to be focused on any one thing the entire time then you won’t be disappointed. It’s not a cerebral movie despite being set in high school, and it’s not so serious that you really need to pay attention for the whole movie. But what really made it was the horror scene that was thrust into the movie once Mark Harmon’s character was kicked out of the class. This one turning point was what made it clear that the students had finally banded together in order to unite for a common cause.
So why was this scene so pivotal?
It united a bunch of misfits that had little to nothing in common.
High school is a time when cliques are formed and people are singled out from one group or another. Even in schools where this isn’t the norm you can still see the dividing lines between people when it comes to various interests. In this film the idea is that the jocks don’t hang with the nerds, the film geeks are just the guys that everyone seems to avoid, and the preppies and the other different groups all have their own hang-ups as well. In this scene though everyone is working together in order to get their teacher back. Why? Because he found a way to make them care about something.
It was stunningly realistic.
The blood, the gore, the guts, and that eyeball on the pencil were gut-churning. That’s what made it so great. Even the ruler in the mouth was just over the top enough to really creep people out. But it was the mark of someone that’s good at their job and loves what they’re doing. The two film buffs in the room were obviously true students of the game and knew what they were doing, which, as the story goes, makes for a good reason why they were in fact very bright kids but just hadn’t applied themselves. A lot of creative geniuses are called lazy because they don’t accomplish as much as others where it can be seen and counted. Unfortunately a lot of these individuals are extremely bright, but in different ways that aren’t as easy to see.
It was the culmination a teacher’s influence and effort that finally paid off.
Mark Harmon is a great actor. Even in this film he was very good, and this was done in his younger, Pre-Gibbs years. The fact that he was convincing enough that a bunch of kids would actually to the trouble of terrorizing a new teacher in such a manner speaks volumes about how inspirational he must have been. Teachers that elicit this kind of response when they’re gone are worth more than a dime a dozen. They’re the entire mint when tallying up just how effective they are with students.
That might seem like a lot to take from one scene, but really I could go on.
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