HIGH SCHOOL U.S.A. (1983) **

Michael J. Fox stars as the class cut-up who draws the ire of the school preppie (Anthony Edwards) when he falls in love with his girlfriend (Nancy McKeon, who was in Poison Ivy with Fox two years later).  Naturally, Edwards gets jealous, and plays a prank on Fox that lands him in detention.  Michael J. then challenges him to a drag race to settle the matter once and for all.

I’m kind of a sucker for these all-star Made for TV movies, especially ones that have teenage casts chockful of ‘80s stars.  Even with my predisposition for the genre, High School U.S.A. left me a little cold.  I wanted to like it, but it’s high on clichés and low on laughs.

Still, it’s worth watching solely for the incredible cast.  I mean where else are you going to see Bob Denver and Crispin Glover playing father and son?  There’s also Tony Dow as the principal, Dawn Wells as a home economics teacher, David Nelson as the janitor and Dana Plato, Todd Bridges, and Crystal Bernard as students.  Seeing all these familiar faces in one place has its charms.  If only they had some decent material to work with.  

High School U.S.A. is sprawling and ramshackle.  It’s at its best when it’s focusing on the students, but it unwisely gets bogged down with a lot of unnecessary subplots involving the teachers.  Director Rod (The Garbage Pail Kids) Amateau sets up the gags in an obvious manner and many of the punchlines are foregone conclusions.  It may be an ‘80s movie, but most of the clichés (like the drag race finale) come straight out of the ‘50s.

It’s not all bad though.  I liked Bridges’ robot, who at one point, falls in love with a soda machine.  There’s also a scene where the girls spy on the boys in the locker room for a change.  No matter what you think of High School U.S.A., it does have a scene where Michael J. Fox saves Crispin Glover from a bully two years before he did the same thing in Back to the Future, so it has that going for it.  

A TV pilot, which featured some of the same cast members playing different characters, followed the next year.