So much average

As Good As It Gets

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Fortunately, I never fell prey to taking on the trendy lingo of my late baby boomer generation, but for the fun of it, it's nice to go back and laugh while listening to how the hip generation becomes the broken hip generation and goes from being on the old guy's lawn to being the old guy who yells at the newest hip generation to get off their lawn. This expose of drug rackets surrounding urban high schools has the famous scene utilized in "It Came From Hollywood" where old squares try to explain to urban high school teachers just what to look out for to determine if a student is smoking pot, shooting heroine or sniffing any sort of nose inserting stimulant. Listening in is sexy teacher Jan Sterling who seems to believe that there's no such thing as a totally bad boy or girl, but for these students (some of whom seem rather long in the tooth to be high school students), they are absurdly rebellious. When newcomer Russ Tamblyn arrives at the school, he's instantly demanding control of the hip crowd, and finds himself in over his head when he tries to infiltrate a heroine ring to expose its supposed respectful leaders. John Drew Barrymore and Mamie Van Doren are among the other students, and Van Doren is over the top (both in her acting and in her cleavage) as the loose living and obviously much older than she's supposed to be sex kitten who drunkenly dumps a much older date simply because she can't stand anybody who can't hold their liquor.The future Uncle Fester and former child star (Jackie Coogan) is the so-called respectable townsman who allows Tamblyn to start selling heroine for him, unaware that Tamblyn is really working for the police. This of course is exposed, and results in one of the most hysterical showdowns between Coogan, Tamblyn, the local law and students in a malt shop whom you all of a sudden expect to break out in a song from "Grease". Jerry Lee Lewis provides a few live musical numbers, while Diane Jergens (never heard of her!) gets "special billing" as the alleged female lead. This is a delight to the ear for its campy dialog and should be shown to every generation just to show them how ridiculous their lingo actually sounds in polite conversation. Sterling is sincere in her performance and still quite stunning to look at, while Tamblyn is obviously practicing for his upcoming role as Riff in "West Side Story". For a major studio like MGM to release this (I can't imagine this playing anywhere outside a drive-in) shows how society in the late 1950's was changing. Certainly, Louis B. Mayer never would have allowed his respectable studio to release such teenage garbage like this, especially filmed on the same street sets where the Andy Hardy series and "Meet Me in St. Louis" were once shot. As far as juvenile delinquent films go, this is probably the highest of the rung, although no classic like "Rebel Without a Cause" which took great pains in documenting the emotional struggles of teenagers in its day.

A real cool cat (played by Russ Tamblyn) transfers to a new high school, where he wants to "rumble", and "make the scene" as the "top stud" of the "wheelers and dealers". He's "got four big ones and he's lookin' for junk". It's a blast from the past, where hot rods aren't the only thing that's smokin'; where high school teachers are from squaresville; and where the "kittens" include a very three-dimensional Mamie Van Doren. Can ya' dig?Our cool cat tells the old biddy who works in the principal's office: "You know, if you were twenty years younger, even then I'd hate to be stuck with you on a date". Far out, man. You can call him "daddy-o", cause like, he's hip. He's "got the gold", and he wants "to score like the Yanks".The dialogue's a hoot. But I didn't dig the cinematography ... too much light. Needs more dark interiors and smoke ... could have used some bongo drums and guys wearing "shades".But it does have poetry. Cool! In one of the better sequences, as Jackie Coogan hits the keys, Phillipa Fallon recites a hip poem that in part goes like this: "I had a canary who couldn't sing. I had a cat that let me share my pad with her. I bought a dog that killed the cat that ate the canary. What is truth? ... We cough blood on this earth. Now there's a race for space. We can cough blood on the moon soon. Tomorrow is dragsville, cats. Tomorrow is a king-size drag". Spoken in the proper rhythm, it's out of sight!Like, the jive is all in code, see? You have to get a fix on the lingo to gain entry into the rebellious in-crowd. The Eisenhower-era straitjacket is too tight. Needs some breathing space.There's a nifty plot twist near the end, if you haven't been plastered already with spoilers, which are like king-size drags.Casting and acting are groovy, especially Russ Tamblyn.As a razzle-dazzle retro to 1950s teenage hipsville, "High School Confidential" is the cinematic bull's-eye. What a king-size hoot.

Having first read about this '50s juvenile delinquent movie in the book "Cult Movies 2", when I saw a DVD displayed in my local library, I knew I had to check High School Confidential! out. With Russ Tamblyn as a troubled kid going to a new school, Diane Jergens as his potential girlfriend, and John Drew Barrymore as his rival/potential partner in a drug ring, the fireworks that happens is slowly but surely coming but not in the way you think! Mamie Van Doren is a hoot as Tamblyn's "aunt" who puts the moves on him and anyone who's not her husband who's conveniently out of town during most of the picture. There's also former child star, and later Uncle Fester, Jackie Coogan and a star of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, Jan Sterling, here. And then there's "The Killer", Jerry Lee Lewis, singing the title song on a flatbed truck to get things off to a rousing start. With a young Michael Landon and lots of dated slang that still provide some amusement today along with some car chases and some fights, High School Confidential! might be the most "trippin" movie from the '50s I've seen yet!

I just finished watching "High School Confidential" on TCM, and it's even worse than I remembered it was when I first watched it 50 years ago at a Drive-In theater. I knew how misguided the plot was even back in 1958. Being a 16 year old teenager at the time, it bugged me, because the movie in no way represented my generation. Like the guys I hung around with, we all felt that it was just an older adult's impression of what they thought it was like, to be a teenager at the time! Talking' jive, Beatnik poetry, grown adults playing the part of teenagers, using expressions like, "Crazy man", "I dig it the most", and "weed-head!" Hot Rods and Roadsters were popular at the time, but no teenager trying to be cool, would be caught dead driving a Chrysler Imperial Convertable as his car of choice. Even worse, the film promotes the false impression that smoking a joint is highly addictive and causes one to become totally drug-crazed, ala "Refer Madness." And that those who do smoke a joint, automatically move right on up to heroin afterward. I think movies like this one, did little in trying to persuade teenagers in the 1950s to be good, because they failed to keep it real. It was so over the top in every way, that it ended up being a comedic parody of itself.