Gripping story with well-crafted characters

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

School Daze isn't something that is exclusive to those who went to all-black colleges, despite what some other commenters have said on IMDb. Coming from an average state school, there's still nothing *big* in the movie that comes from specifically being all-black, as there are many things like fraternities/sororities, male and female camaraderie, sex, fashion, insults, sports and rituals in general that are common to any college experience. Spike Lee captures that, when he's at his best here, very well. If you *did* go to an all-black college ala Lee's alma mater Moorehouse, then I'm sure it will have more relevance. But in general, Lee's made a solid, technically wild college comedy/musical/drama, with some major missteps.There are some messages thrown about in School Daze, mostly around sexism, not so much racism (there's barely a white person to be seen in the film so it's not really an issue to deal with per-say), but they're all used in relativity with the story and characters, which is good. We're given Mission college, an all-black college down south, where classes are pretty much moot and everything revolves around cliques of various sorts: the Greek frat, which Half-Pint (Spike Lee) is trying to join, and his cousin Dap (Fishburne) who definitely is not and is defiant against a lot of things on campus, which nearly get him expelled. There are also the jigaboo's and the wannabes, two sets of girls on campus who are certainly opposed (as we see, brilliantly, in one of the better musical numbers).While Lee's plot isn't always connected together, there's so much that works when he keeps the dialog moving along. He has a great sense of the characters, the BS that binds guys together and how the rhythm of a conversation with these 18-22 year olds goes, and about the ambivalence between the opposing sexes, leading up to the dramatic climax. Even most of the actors, close to all of them their first time in a Lee joint (Esposito, Davis, Bill Nunn), are terrific when given the chance showing off how absurd and, in retrospect in life, abstract all of this becomes. What keeps it down from being a lot better- and, sadly, what makes it look a lot more like an exercise in style (which, granted, was Lee's first movie with a budget above 100 grand and for a studio)- are the padded musical performances, and specifically those that don't contribute anything to the story. The first sequence is dynamite as the actresses all perform in an energetic performance about the differences between the sororities. After that, it's more or less (more for the one scene with the singer intercut with the sex) just filler that is shot well but empty.Nevertheless, School Daze shows a filmmaker ready and hungry behind the lens to try and do things and show us bits and pieces of life that haven't been much in American movies, and at best it's riveting and entertaining. For this it's commendable, but it's also a stepping stone for Do the Right Thing. 7.5/10

Why do you all sit around snootting about left and right? What is wrong with your minds? The pain of yesteryear should be gone if your not going through that yourself... Telling others to wake up when you should wake up first. The meetings of your peers and elders is crucial to the stability of your society. No one man is your saviour and you all know this. You all know i own the damn planet not the damn people. You have your own ways and means which i have tried to respect. You just do not and have not ever respected mine. Thinking to back in history even from the time of King Tut who died early. Catch yourself with your anger and mind frame of deceit it is not healthy to your long term goals. Nature rapidly changes on us all.

So what if you went to Harvard and not Hampton, this film is still well-shot, well-acted and damn funny. If you can't understand the light vs. dark, town vs. gown, Greeks vs. GDI conflicts, maybe you don't... under... stand... English... well. I never saw the movie in its entirety until I was about 20 (and pledging at an HBCU, but that's another story) but it just got better as I got older. This movie is like many of Spike's: it's for a group of people (Black ones) that rarely get to tell their own stories. If other people get it, super. On a sidenote, what's so "universal" about Dirty Dancing? I've never had to drop out of a contest because of my botched abortion that Lenny from Law & Order had to come help me out with. I've also never been a small, Jewish man in New York City, but people seem to find Woody Allen's movies "universal" enough. Why don't these issues come up with movies made by whi... (ahem) other filmmakers?

This film dealt with a lot of inner conflicts that African-Americans where unwilling to deal with at the time. Class struggles, light skinned vs. dark skinned and greeks vs. non-greeks. I just purchased it on DVD, but I remember seeing this film when it first came out in February of 1988 and it is just as powerful and entertaining now as it was then. It's amazing to look at this film now and see all of the actors who went on to successful careers afterwards, like Laurence(then Larry) Fishburne, Tisha Campbell, Giancarlo Esposito, Roger Guenveur Smith, Kadeem Hardison, Jasmine Guy, Darryl Bell, Rusty Cundieff(director of "Tales From The Hood"), Bill Nunn, Branford Marsalis, and of course I can't forget Samuel L. Jackson. Three years after this film came out a cousin from Seattle came to visit, I showed him this film and he was surprised to discover that there were actually historically black colleges and universities(HBCU's) in this country. He later attended Southern University here in Baton Rouge. That was the effect this film had and continues to have on young African-Americans and their views of HBCU's.