When my professor handed me this movie, he looked at me with a wide grin and hit me with a “I can’t wait to read your reaction”, as if he had placed a hidden cinematic gem in my hand. Well, with all due respect to journalistic integrity, I must give him an honest review from both me and my mom: it sucked.
Much like a punk concert in a suburban rec center, the energy is there, really, but the execution is deeply questionable.
There are some movies that fly by, making you feel like you just sat down when the credits roll. Did you think that’s this movie? No. Rock n’ Roll High School manages to stretch time itself, turning 93 minutes into what felt like an eternity. A purgatory where “Rock ’n’ Roll Highschool” is played over and over again— and when you think it’s over it just restarts once again.
I literally forgot the plot while watching this movie, but I’ll do my best to recount it through my notes and scattered scribbles of “Dear God is it over yet”.
Rock n Roll Highschool follows Riff Randall, a high school student ( Shocking ) whose entire personality was about how much she loved the Ramones— specifically Joey. She skips class, writes them a song, and is convinced that it’ll be her shot into music making.
Two guesses what the song was.
But standing in her way— and in the way of the punk and music scene it’s set is Principal Togar, who might have well been a cartoon villain twirling her muscle with how devious she was. Her belief in that rock music was corrupting the youth and it must be stopped at all costs. ( She might have been onto something if she was talking about the writers of the movie, honestly. )
To fluff up the movie and try to give it actual life they put in Tom, the world’s most forgettable love interest who is madly in love with Riff but can’t talk to women without being extorted by an ugly man who also has never talked to women. Instead he spends half the movie being pushed to the corner with Riff’s best friend, Kate. Who is equally unimportant but I think they wanted to make this movie as physically long as they possibly could.
There’s also some weird mad scientist subplot involving hall monitors? Don’t worry about it, it wasn’t important and I still don’t really understand what they were up to.
There was also exploding mice. Literally couldn’t tell you why that was added in either.
Anyways, the Ramones finally show up and I wish I could say the movie picks up when we meet them. Instead it dives further into nonsense. The students of Generic Name Highschool ( taken straight out of my notes, thanks past Arin. ) become inspired by Riff and her freedom of Rock ’n’ Roll and decide to rebel against the system. This all leads to a chaotic series of events that could only make Animal House look like a documentary.
There’s a swat team, there’s news reporters, theres a giant mouse worried about her kids in there. I literally could not tell you how we got from point A to point B at this pace.
And the finale of the school? They blow it up.
Remember Kate? She’s some science wizard on the side and her and Riff decide the only way to fix the school is to reduce it to rubble.
The craziest part of all that is literally… no one cares? The swat team didn’t care, the principal didn’t really care, the Romones who are also there didn’t care… I didn’t care.
Then they play Rock ’n’ Highschool one more time for good measure and the movie just kind of ends. Like there wasn’t just an act of domestic terrorism or anything.
So my final thoughts?
This movie wasn’t a game changer nor did it capture the punk scene all that well. But it did give me Joey Ramone awkwardly acting while looking like he hadn’t slept for a week and some of the worst lip syncing of all time. So take credit where it’s due.
This movie was supposed to be a love song to the Ramones, one where they only got the rights to three of their songs and played them on repeat the entire time.
Honestly, it’s not really just a love song to the Ramones— just to Joey Ramone. Who, objectively, was the ugliest one. ( RIP, Joey, I’m sure you were a fox in your time but the standards have risen. ) There are multiple moments in the movie where they stop everything to just zoom in on him like he’s the second coming of Christ.
My real issue with this movie is that it thinks it’s punk. It’s just not. It’s a goofy, exaggerated, cartoonish version of punk. It’s giving someone who read a TIME magazine article and decided to make an entire movie based off of that.
My mom’s final thoughts?
She hated this movie.
Paired with the special guest star, my dad, who spent the entire runtime trying to lecture us on the importance of this movie and the revolution in cinema it stated. Spoiler: It didn’t. Every time a scene made zero sense ( the entire movie ), he’d pipe up with “You have to understand, this was groundbreaking.”
We have yet to figure out how it was ground breaking. He never elaborated.
All that was all enough to make her try and plan her escape around the 45 minute mark— which is a rarity for her.
0 stars from us both.
4 from my dad who is still pestering me days later to look up random movies and see their release dates to prove this movie was monumental.
This describes this horrible movie perfectly.