Jennifer’s Body, the first script of Diablo Cody’s to be produced since she won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2007’s Juno, opens today. It’s about a cheerleader played by Megan Fox who’s possessed by demons from hell and wreaks bloody carnage upon her male classmates. In other words, it’s about high school.
Of course there’s no shortage of movies that portray high school as a kind of hell on earth, both literally (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and figuratively (Election, Heathers, every movie to ever star Ally Sheedy). But in honor of Jennifer’s Body, I thought I’d re-enroll in a few other, more random cinematic high schools, if only to remind myself how happy I am to have left the real thing behind all those years ago.
Which reminds me — if I ever see the inside of a locker again, it’ll be too soon.
My Bodyguard (1980): Pre-adolescence is a very impressionable time for a young moviegoer. For some reason, two movies stand out from that period of my life. One is 1979’s Meatballs, which introduced me to “It just doesn’t matter!,” a mantra I probably leaned on a little too often in subsequent years. The other is My Bodyguard.
The Chicago high school that Clifford (Chris Makepeace) attends in that film is pretty tough, in that all it takes to get you roughed up by Matt Dillon’s Mike Moody and his cronies is to show up at school in a hotel limo. And having Ruth Gordon as your grandma back at home — or at least at the hotel where you live — only helps so much.
Fortunately for Clifford, he has Randy, the loner who may or may not have killed his own brother. Randy’s played by Adam Baldwin, who isn’t related to all those other Baldwins, which is a huge advantage in this particular role. Seems to me Clifford and Randy have one of the great movie friendships, and I’d go so far as to place the scene where Moody gets his as one of the top-five movie comeuppances. At least among those not involving an automatic weapon.
It’s worth noting that director Tony Bill also coproduced The Sting, which featured another great cinematic friendship but didn’t showcase Joan Cusack sporting the biggest hair of her career. So I’ll take this one.
To Hollywood’s credit, there’ve been a lot of female-focused thriller/horror films coming out lately. It’s almost as if production studios in La-La Land have suddenly realized there’s a feminine demographic they could cater to/exploit. Unfortunately for the ladies, studios still think that they can just throw anything at audiences and get away with it, which is why so many of the recent “girl power”-type films have been lousy.
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2009, MGM)