Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
This movie ‘Lower Learning’ is terrible. Simply awful. It’s bland, drab, runs at a snails pace, and is supported by one of the most miserably uninspiring stories in like forever. This movie ‘Lower Learning’ also made me laugh. And thus we have a dilemma here with this movie ‘Lower Learning’. One sits in front of their television watching this DVD and feeling a sheet of glass beginning to glaze over one’s eyes only to have that sheet broken by something very funny or some witty clever line of dialog which then abruptly ends. The sheet starts to form again and then is yet again interrupted by something incredibly crude but nonetheless funny and this is a routine that continues throughout the movie until ends. Terrible movie. Funny stuff in terrible movie.
Tom Willoman (Jason Biggs) hates his job as Vice Principle at Geraldine Ferraro Elementary School. He had designs of being like his dad when he grew up, but a tragic situation has landed Tom in the thankless position that the finds himself in now. To the contrary, Tom’s boss Principle Billings (Rob Corddry) absolutely loves his job as he has effectively trained a small number of his elementary school charges in the intricacies of white glove service and who take great care of their principle by bringing him carefully prepared meals, adult beverages, and keeping his golf clubs clean. Principle Billings also fattens his coffers by extorting large sums of money from the parents of his students to insure they get passing grades, but the real money that Principle Billings is looking for is coming when they finally close down this school he’s been running into the ground for years as he’s been systematically skimming millions of the top.
All Billings has to do to close this deal is fail the inspection that is being conducted by State School Inspector Rebecca Seabrook (Eva Longoria Parker), and considering the malaise displayed by the majority of the teachers, and the shoddy condition his school is in, this should be pretty damn easy to accomplish. These teachers consist of Mrs.
Buchwald (Monica Potter) who sits in class smoking and drinking and cursing at her second graders while being terminally depressed about her divorce from wacky Gym teacher Mr. Buchwald (Will Sasso). There’s also bubbly Mr. Abernathy (Nat Faxon) who says some of the most inappropriate things to his kids while not so secretly loving the crazy hot Nurse Gretchen (Jill Latiano) from afar. We should mention that Vice Principle Tom has had a crush Inspector Seabrook since grade school, oft times self pleasuring himself at the mere thought of her, but that’s neither here nor there as now Vice Principle Tom and the substance abusing Inspector Seabrook must come together and find a way to save this Geraldine Ferraro Elementary from the greedy hands of the evil Principle Billings – and believe me when I tell you that whatever happens, you won’t really care one way or another.
So like I said, one moment I watching this crappy movie wondering why I put myself through this stuff and the next minute I’m spitting pop through my nose and I think it dawned on me on what exactly director Mark Lafferty, who also co-wrote the script was doing. Of course this is purely conjecture but I’m guessing that my man had thought of some funny stuff and would jot it down and then read it back and say to himself and say ‘self, damn that’s funny’. Eventually I’m supposing he got together enough funny stuff and then thought that he needed some funny people to recite this funny stuff and thus we have Rob Corddry who could very well be the funniest dude acting in movies today. No joke. He’s not the funniest dude around today because until Dave Chappelle expires from a marijuana overdose he’ll always be that guy for me, and a lot of comedians aren’t all that funny anymore when they get in movies, but not Corddry because that dude is ALWAYS funny. Despite the fact he’s only 36 but looks like he’s 58. Next he got Will Sasso because he’s pretty damn funny too, then you hire professional Straight Man Jason Biggs and toss in Tony Parker’s wife, who’s really not all that funny but she’s hot which is a great equalizer. Now all my man needed some kind of rudimentary story to stick this funny stuff he’s dreamt up and insert these funny people into, and this is what they came up with. And it’s absolutely terrible. This movie probably would’ve worked better as set of disconnected sketch comedy gags because the story that connects everything is just dull and tired and lame… and I’m not sure that saying a bunch of dirty words around kids is all that funny. True if you were to say ‘Hey Dumbass’ too close to my son he very well might respond with ‘Yeah… What do you want?’, but that still doesn’t make it right.
So there you go. ‘Lower Learning’ was an awful movie with funny stuff in it. Awful, awful movie. But it still made me laugh.
