Strong and Moving!

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Class is another one of those 80's sex comedies you've seen already during that era. For the most part, they have more focus on the sex than the comedy, and this movie's no different. What saves it, though, is that they're putting more time and effort into the comedy scenes with slapstick writing that plays out like a domino effect. The execution in those scenes also benefits from the fresh performances of upcoming actors that went on to become key heartthrobs in the biggest teen movies from the 80's, such as Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy (St. Elmo's Fire), as well as Alan Ruck (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and John Cusack (Say Anything). There are even some deep moments too, which touch on maturing into adulthood and building trust within male friendships, especially when McCarthy's character has a sexual relationship with Lowe's mom. Does Class have any class? Not a lot, but with a clever narrative and solid performances, it's worthy of consideration.

One of the better teen movies from the '80s. "Class" along with half a dozen movies are now the classic of teen movies from that era.The movie looks very innocent by today's standards. There's no worries about getting into violent situations at school, and kids could focus on - women. This movie probably made Andrew McCarthy and Rob Lowe a star. Surprise to me was that John Cusak was also in this movie.Today, the movie would have to star someone who's 5-6 years younger to have any kind of realism to it. Jaquiline Bisset is kind of an ideal "hot" mom for the situation.The movie is on bit darker side for a movie made in the '80s, but the story is good, and you get the feel of the culture.This is definitely one of the best teen movies from the '80s, and you wouldn't want to miss it if you're an '80s movie fan.

Naive, shy Jonathan Ogner (Andrew McCarthy in his film debut) goes to prep school and rooms with "Skip" (Rob Lowe) a fun-loving guy. Skip encourages Jon to go out and have sex. Jon ends up accidentally picking up Skip's mother (Jacqueline Bisset) and starting an affair with her! This is one strange movie. It starts off with very crude humor--poor McCarthy is humiliated again and again. Then it switches to sex with McCarthy and Bisset (nothing is shown in the bedroom scenes) and THEN to drama when Jon discovers who she is and vice versa. Some of the humor is funny but it mixes uneasily with the drama and the movie is constantly switching gears. It's not a terrible movie--just wildly uneven.It is worth catching for quite a few now well-known people in their film debuts (McCarthy, Virginia Madesen and John Cusack are a few) and some good moments here and there. The acting is actually pretty good too. Bisset gives a much better performance than this material deserves; McCarthy is a bit too somber (but this WAS his first movie) and Lowe is actually lots of fun and he's so young! Cliff Robertson pops up in a few scenes and also isn't bad.So not a great movie by any means but worth catching just for the cast.

Three contrived "products" foisted on an unsuspected and ultimately unwilling American public. Some Hollywood exec in the 80s snorted so much cocaine he actually believed that McCarthy, a sniveling, rodent-faced nonentity, had star potential so they stuck the cipher in a series of unfunny sex comedies throughout the decade. In "Class," no-talent pretty boy Rob Lowe teams up with no-talent ugly boy McCarthy to embarrass poor Jacqueline Bisset. Ms Bisset, as Lowe's mother and the only interesting character in the entire film, looks as ravishing as ever, even as she strains under the effort of pretending Andrew McCarthy is sexy.The plot, such as it is, reflects the 80s fascination with inherited wealth: middle-class McCarthy winds up at a prep school full of studdly preppies like Lowe, who are actually poor little rich boys (see? There's no point in envying the wealthy because money isn't everything!). A series of plot machinations throw McCarthy into a glass elevator with Bisset, where they have sex. (Warning: there are multiple shots of an unclothed McCarthy in this film. Not recommended for the faint of heart.) The movie's real dead point is the leaden sequence when Lowe brings little Andrew home with him, where our hero discovers that he's been . . . big fat shocker . . . bonking his roommate's mother! The bigger shock is that Bisset is a drunken (and apparently nearsighted) nymphomaniac who deserves more sympathetic treatment and better co-stars than she gets from this movie. The one semi-saving grace of this movie is that it's blessedly free from drawn-out confrontations. Perhaps they filmmakers realized their young stars had absolutely no capacity for dialogue (or they couldn't hire enough cue-card holders) so they kept the major plot changes brief: during a morning horseback ride, McCarthy asks Bisset: "how are you?" "Get out of my house," she sneers. Lowe is unhappy at home, so instead of spouting some monologue about his pain and alienation that would exhaust his meager abilities, he just sort of takes McCarthy onto a lake in a rowboat and puts on his poutiest face. "Class" managed to destroy Jacqueline Bisset's career, but unfortunately we were stuck with five more years of McCarthy until "Less Than Zero" finally killed him off. (Like a cockroach, Lowe survives.)