Summer School (1987)

IMDb plot summary: Freddy the gym teacher has to teach remedial English in summer (high) school, if he wants tenure. As he can only teach gym and his students want fun, emphasis is on "field trips" - until he's fired unless all his students pass the test.

Directed by Carl Reiner. Stars Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, and Robin Thomas.

Summer School is a comedy starring Mark Harmon as a PE teacher who is unwillingly roped in to teach remedial English in summer school. He is not prepared for this and the students have no intention of letting him do it, so he has to resort to unorthodox measures to achieve those goals. I didn't have high expectations for this but it ended up mostly working for me. It's both cleverer and kinder than a lot of films in this vein often are, but it also manages to avoid being sentimental the way a film might be if it were striking a more dramatic tone. Obviously this is a horrible example of good boundaries in teacher-student relationships, but in the context of a film where we're letting our suspension of disbelief take the reins, it was a good time, and I did laugh a lot more than I thought I was going to, so nicely done.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Summer School (1987)

📊 Ranked #840/4309 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat EDtv (#2171 → #2176)

beat Open Your Eyes (#1087 → #1069)

lost to Argo (#548 → #601)

lost to The Karate Kid (#819 → #605)

beat Sisters (#953 → #996)

beat Brooklyn (#885 → #854)

lost to Back to the Future Part III (#852 → #888)

beat Shiva Baby (#868 → #968)

beat Society of the Snow (#860 → #891)

beat Bubba Ho-tep (#856 → #889)

lost to Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (#854 → #838)

lost to Roxanne (#855 → #839)