140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
Wow, that escalated quickly. By his 2nd film, Spike has completely arrived. Totally unique, polished filmmaking with surprising musicality.
Spoiler-free Movie Review of School Daze:
School Daze is fairly straightforward, dare I say traditional, filmmaking from Spike Lee. The narrative is completely direct and the structure and archetypes are completely familiar. If you’ve seen a college movie like Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds, you will be at once at home in the setting.
That doesn’t mean School Daze is not a unique film, of course. Lee takes the familiar setting and provides an insight into an experience and perspective that is unfamiliar to many. That’s what great filmmakers and storytellers do; they take a classic tale and put their own stamp upon it. While it is interesting as a white male to see more of the complexities of the disagreements between young African Americans at the fictional Mission College, it is a larger achievement to see the similarities. The same would be true if this film was showing what it is like to be at a music school or an all-Jewish school or a commuter school in the Australian outback. It’s fascinating to see the different issues unique to this group of individuals, it’s what gives a story its color, but ultimately, the more important point is our similarities, not our differences.
Actually, while I didn’t attend a historically black school like Lee’s alma mater Morehouse, the real reason School Daze is such a different experience to mine is that I went to an urban state school with a large commuter base. We were never really isolated on a campus or filled with some central school spirit. While the entire premise of the film is how divided the campus is, everyone seems involved in everything. During the football scene, everyone at the school is there and invested in the game. I didn’t go to a college like that.
The football scene is also clever in that they never once show the game, just the reactions of the fans. That’s old-school…
The picture centers mostly around Larry (not yet going by Laurence) Fishburne as Vaughn “Dap” Dunlap, a senior student obsessed with getting the school administration to divest from South Africa in the days of apartheid. He has the conditional support of his friends and girlfriend, Rachel (Kyme), but they also want to concentrate on their studies and enjoying the college experience.
Dap & Rachel’s antagonists are members of the Gamma Phi Gamma fraternity and female counterpart the Gamma Rays, led by Julian (Giancarlo Esposito) and Jane (Tisha Campbell), respectively. Straddling the divide is Dap’s cousin “Half-Pint” who is pledging Gamma.
The main divide, though, is the conflict in the African-American community over self identity. Questions of hair styles, skin tone, appropriation of racial slurs – these issues are at the heart of self-image and identity, issues that are hugely important at any time of life, but integral to those of college age young people.
Nowhere is this handled more impressively than in a show-stopping musical number “Straight and Nappy” (written by Bill Lee). The entire picture is musical, but handling complicated issues like self-discrimination in the form of a Busby Berkeley style musical number is absolutely sublime. The musical numbers are great; unorthodox in the subject matter, but completely traditional in most other ways. Spike is an admitted admirer of the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals, so the fact that School Daze plays it mostly straight really shouldn’t be all that surprising.
School Daze is a fantastic picture. Anchored by great musical performances (except that dreadful dance tune “The Butt”; what the hell was that about?) and great acting, the whole film buzzes with the energy of a young visionary with something to say. The ending is unsatisfying, but I bet I would have loved it when I was an angry and passionate young man. Recommended.
Poster:
Trailer:
https://youtu.be/RHYAneAE578
Bechdel Test:
Pass
The Representation Test Score: B (10 pts)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
| Main Cast | Laurence Fishburne Dap Giancarlo Esposito Julian Tisha Campbell-Martin (as Tisha Campbell) Jane Toussaint Kyme Rachel Meadows |
| Rating | R |
| Release Date | Fri 12 Feb 1988 UTC |
| Director | Spike Lee |
| Genres | Comedy, Drama, Musical |
| Plot | A not so popular young man wants to pledge to a popular fraternity at his historically black college. |
| Poster |  |
| Runtime | 121 |
| Tagline | |
| Writers | Spike Lee (written by) |
| Year | 1988 |
