I am getting mentally exhausted from watching so many generic movies. "Making The Grade" looks as if it was churned out of the same factory as a hundred other '80s movies.
A spoiled high school kid doesn't want to spend his senior year going to a private school. He hires a trouble maker (Judd Nelson) to pretend to be him and attend the school in his place. End of story.
There is no chemistry whatsoever between Nelson and his female costar (Jonna Lee). What about comedy? I literally laughed one time during the 100 minutes of this film. It is dull and predictable. You would be infinitely better off watching Judd Nelson for the millionth time in "The Breakfast Club" rather than watch this piece of drivel. 1/10
Making the Grade
1984
Action / Comedy / Romance
Making the Grade
1984
Action / Comedy / Romance
Keywords: sports
Plot summary
Lazy preppie Palmer Woodrow hires street-smart Eddie Keaton to go to school for him while he lives it up in Europe. Eddie falls in love with preppie gal Tracey, upsetting Biff, the Hoover Academy bully. When his bookie from the old neighborhood, Dice, comes to collect on Eddie's gambling debts and Palmer returns early from Europe, the scheme slowly starts to unravel. Soon, Eddie can't even tell whose side he's really on.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
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Grade: F
T isn't for terrific. It's for tedious!
As a teenager in the early 80's and a college student in 1984, I thought I'd find a few amusing moments in this comedy. Nope. Only one, and that was in the opening scene for the elderly maid who brings Judd Nelson his breakfast in his disaster area of a huge bedroom, knocking previous dining trays on the floor so she can make room for the extremely heavy one she's carrying. From there, he is sent off to his father's alma matter, probably the only college that will take him, an ultra preppy ivy league school with some of the most obnoxious prigs outside of the adults in "Caddyshack". Nelson hires someone to basically due his studying for him, and turns the campus into his own private party house, complete with Andrew Dice Clay, about as funny as a keg party invaded by parents of the attendees.
There's nothing memorable about this film outside that promising start, and the mask wearing maid is ten times funnier than anything that follows her shuffling walk-on. Nelson and the ensemble of young actors are doomed by a horrible script that didn't even have a grasp of how to make a college age film funny. Gordon Jump as the head of the college is pompous but lacks the hysterical snobbery and scheming of John Vernon's Dean Wormer from "Animal House". I consider it a miracle that I made it through this film, but this is going on file with other wretched comedies evicted from my collection. However, it's instantly added to the worst five of 1984 and top ten of the most hideous comedies of the 1980's. A root canal with no pain killer is preferable to this.
Making the Grade
Originally called The Last American Preppie and the first appearance of Andrew Clay's Dice character, Making the Grade has Eddie Keaton (Judd Nelson) and Palmer Woodrow (Dana Olsen) making a deal. The con artist will work with the rich kid to keep him in class at the Hoover Academy, which will keep him in money. In return, Keaton gets paid ten grand - which he owes to Dice - and gets to drive away in a brand new Porsche.
Hijinks ensue.
Directed by Dorian Walker (Teen Witch) from a story by Charles Gale (Ernest Scared Stupid) and a screenplay by Gene Quintano (the writer of Comin' at Ya!, Treasure of the Four Crowns, King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, three Police Academy movies, Operation Dumbo Drop, Loaded Weapon 1 and Pittsburgh's second best action movie Sudden Death),this plays like any number of 80s bad kid does good comedies. Of course, it's all for the love of a good woman, Tracy (Joanna Lee).
But hey look - there's Ronald Lacey, perhaps better known as Toht, the German soldier who had a coin burned into his hand before his entire face melted right off in Raiders of the Lost Ark, as well as Gordon Jump and Dan Schneider, who would go from Better Off Dead to creating much of Nickelodeon's programming before he got cancelled.
There was supposed to be a sequel called The Tourista, but it never happened. I think I may be the only person who would have watched that.