Making the Grade

1984 "If you can't make it...fake it!"
Making the Grade
5.6| 1h45m| R| en| More Info
Released: 18 May 1984 Released
Producted By: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

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.

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Reviews

wrweberjr For anyone who was alive and well in the 80's this movie is the funniest of all time. Of course you might need to remember the Preppy Handbook, putting pennies in your shoes (or coins from other countries if you wanted to be really cool), nicknames like Bif, Kiki and Buffy, and men wearing pink and yellow.The star of this movie is the REAL Palmer Woodrow, Dana Olsen. It is a shame it doesn't look like he is still in the business.The character of Rand is well played and is very, very funny.Andrew Dice Clay, Gordon Jump and Judd Nelson all put in solid performances.I have this on DVD...it is great.I really wish they made Tourista. That would have been excellent.
fre3lee Andrew "Dice" Clay plays "Dice". I'm used to the movie box cover where the guy is sitting on the hood of a Porsche. This is a story of a "my parents are rich, and so am I" kid, who tires of attending Prep School, so he hires Judd Nelson's character to play him while he vacations/travels around. -He gets tired of travel, so he returns.., -I'm not at liberty to say anymore, so you'll have to watch the movie to see what happens! It is a decent movie; kind of "B-movieish", but well worth the watch if you get the chance. (Please, if you see this video in the rental store, rent it! You won't be sorry, I promise you.) Gordon Jump (WKRP's Arthur 'Big Guy' Carlson) plays the Dean. Not a big role in the film, but a part he played well. Good story; Funny movie, and I recommend it highly.
Wizard-8 Determined to watch every Golan-Globus movie ever made, I finally sat down to watch this years after it was released. To tell the truth, I wasn't expecting much. However, I was pleasantly surprised that it was pretty painless to sit through. The movie didn't have the crude edge of other teen comedies of the '80s, the cast was made up of a likable bunch of individuals, and there were several genuine laugh-out-loud moments. The funniest bits come from Walter Olkewicz's coach character; even though he was probably cast because he greatly resembles John Belushi, he is really funny, and it's a shame that he almost completely disappears from the second half of the movie.However, the movie is far from perfect. Much of the time the movie seems to be spinning its wheels, where scene after scene goes by with little to absolutely no advance to the plot. It's almost like you are seeing a bunch of deleted scenes from the "special features" section of a DVD. At the same time, there are a lot of scenes that seem to finish much sooner than they should, as well as a lack of explanation about some things. Since the movie runs 105 minutes (quite long for a comedy), my guess is that the original cut of the movie ran much, much longer than 105 minutes. Then when they tried to cut down the movie to an acceptable running length, a lot of material that would have made the movie make more sense had to go.As problem-filled as this movie is, there is something likeable about it all the same, enough so that you can't help but wonder what "Tourista", the sequel announced during the closing credits - that ultimately never got made - would have been like.
sychonic Back in the mid-eighties the movie industry churned out teen comedies trying to capture some of the spark and success of Caddyshack and Animal House. Mostly, they failed. Class, Private School, all of the Revenge of the Nerd flicks, and even the high brow attempts like the John Hughes films, all ended up formulaic, inane, poorly plotted, and silly. Perhaps the only exception is Risky Business which rises above the genre. "Making the Grade", however, is not an exception. It has all the same problems as "Breakfast Club" or "Better Off Dead" or "Sixteen Candles". But if you're in the mood for this kind of movie, I'd pick this one up rather than any of the others. It captures some of the attitudes and styles of the time quite nicely, like when the preppy nerd is trying to teach urban kid Judd Nelson how to dress for prep school. And Dana Olsen is absolutely hysterical, easily stealing the movie, as the obnoxious rich kid hiring Nelson to complete school for him. The movie has some genuinely funny scenes mixed in with the snobs versus slobs formula. Don't expect much, but low expectations are the key to a good time with a movie like this.