Class made a ton of money back in the day with Brat Pack king Rob Lowe starring in another teen film about some oversexed adults and undersexed young men. In this case the undersexed one is Andrew McCarthy who gets some love lessons from Jacqueline Bisset who is also Lowe's mother. Which makes it all nice and cozy.

McCarthy is a young country kid who wins a scholarship to an exclusive boy's prep school which is mostly inhabited by to the manor born types like Lowe. In fact Lowe has the ultimate prep school name of Skip.

Around women McCarthy makes Inspector Clousseau look like Errol Flynn and Lowe gives him some fateful advice about trying to hook up at a certain bar on Rush Street in Chicago where there are lots of women who are as longing as he is. Unfortunately one of them happens to be his mother and that's who McCarthy does it with. Right in one of those glass elevators.

Class veers uncomfortably back and forth from comedy to drama without any warning. The values of the Reagan era are upheld here, especially by Cliff Robertson as solid a venture capitalist as you'll ever find and Lowe's father. He's treating his wife like another of his possessions like his mansion or his yacht and no wonder she's looking for love in all the wrong places.

As we see noted, a whole lot of people like Andrew McCarthy, John Cusack, Casey Siemaszko, Lolita Davidovitch, and Virginia Madsen all made their screen debuts. That is probably what Class will go down in movie annals for.

The naive and clumsy Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) joins the prep school Vernon Academy expecting to go to Harvard. He befriends his wealthy roommate Skip (Rob Lowe) and soon he sends Jonathan to Chicago to lose his virginity. Jonathan meets the thirty and something years old Ellen (Jacqueline Bisset) and they have a love affair. Jonathan lies to her about where he studies and he falls in love with her. When they decide to travel to New York, Ellen accidentally discovers that Jonathan studies at the Vernon Academy and she vanishes. In the Christmas break, Skip invites Jonathan to spend the holiday with his family, and Jonathan has a huge surprise finding who Ellen is.

"Class" is a pleasant movie that begins very funny, with Andrew McCarthy, Rob Lowe, John Cusack and Virginia Madsen very young. Jacqueline Bisset is extremely beautiful and fits perfectly to the role of Ellen. Unfortunately the story is lost between comedy and drama with a disappointing conclusion. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Uma Questão de Classe" ("A Question of Class")

Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) comes from a working class family. He gets a scholarship to a prep school rooming with the rich Skip (Rob Lowe). Skip immediately plays a prank on Jonathan which he returns in spectacular fashion. They become fast friends. Coincentantal events would conspire for Jonathan to have an affair with Skip's mother Ellen (Jacqueline Bisset). They would realize their connection when Jonathan joins Skip back home for Christmas break.

The movie starts off as a pretty funny sex romp with some memorable pranks. The meeting between Jonathan and Skip's mother is beyond low probability, but it's not a big deal. I think the problem is that Jacqueline Bisset never fully committed or the writing never allowed her to. She's a rich housewife who has an affair. She could have been funnier as a raunchy cougar. When the affair was found out, the drama gets drained out of the movie. It's as if the writers couldn't figure out how to ramp up the drama. It fizzled out rather than exploded.

Watch out for John Cusack, and Alan Ruck as two of the school friends. Also Virginia Madsen appears in her first movie and promptly shows her boob. It was a bit of misdirection because this isn't really a sex romp as much as advertised.