Pretty Smart (1987) New World/Comedy RT: 84 minutes Rated R (nudity, sexual content, language, drug material) Director: Dimitri Logothetis Screenplay: Dan Hoskins Music: Jay Levy and Eddie Arkin Cinematography: Dimitris Papakonstadis Release date: March 1987 (US) Cast: Tricia Leigh Fisher, Lisa Lorient, Brad Zutaut, Dennis Cole, Paris Vaughn, Kimberly B. Delfin, Patricia Arquette, Joely Fisher, Kim Waltrip, Julie Kristen Smith, Ken Solomon, Tamara Hyler, Nick Cellozzi, Costas Tzumas, George Kotanides, Richard Svare, Maria De Vial, Elizabeth Davis, Charlotte-Michele Grenzer, Syndie Kirkland, Holly Nelson, Michael Karman, Nana, Cecilia Delorme. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
Only in the hedonistic 80s could a filmmaker get away with a movie like Pretty Smart, a teen comedy set at a snooty finishing school in Greece. Not only does it contain a ton of gratuitous female nudity, it also features an antagonist who’s beyond creepy.
In most teen comedies, we’d be talking about an authority figure of some sort who’s constantly putting a damper on the kids’ attempts at fun. That’s not what we’re dealing with in Pretty Smart. The headmaster of AaWeiglby, Richard Crawley (Cole, The Felony Squad), isn’t your garden-variety party pooper. He raises the bar to a new low by also being a sleazy pervert who secretly tapes the girls in various states of undress via hidden cameras in their rooms. He then sells the tapes to “erotic art collectors” from different countries. On top of that, he makes select students unwitting accomplices in his drug-smuggling operation by planting cocaine on them when they travel. These are the actions of a criminal, not an uptight stuffed shirt. A movie like this, especially one that bills itself as a comedy, wouldn’t get made today. Can you imagine the backlash? Yikes!
The story centers on Zigs (Fisher, Stick), a rebellious teen whose parents decide to send her away to a prestigious boarding school along with her “perfect” twin sister Jennifer (Lorient) in order to curb her bad behavior. The school is divided into two cliques, “preens” (the stuck-up popular girls) and “subs” (any girl that doesn’t fit in). Jennifer goes with the preens led by super-bitchy Samantha (Smith, Angel III: The Final Chapter) while Zigs goes with the subs deepening their sibling rivalry. Zigs immediately runs afoul of Crawley with her attitude which he’s determined to break. He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, the poor dumb bastard.
That, of course, is a general overview of Pretty Smart. There’s plenty else going on starting with some business about the school’s lease not being renewed by the property owner even though they always meet their yearly rental fee, four goats. For money reasons, the owner also offers guided tours of the building, a former castle. A tour guide appears several times with tourists in tow. Although a loner by nature, Zigs develops a kinship with fellow subs Yuko (Delfin), Torch (Vaughan, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and roommate Zero (Arquette, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3). Zigs delivers a real FU to Crawley when he entrusts her to plan a fancy luncheon to follow a big tennis match against a boy’s academy. The entertainment is an outrageous New Wave band with oiled, muscular bodybuilders in Speedos flexing and gyrating. This is followed by an orgy where the preens “entertain” the rich boys in their rooms. One girl runs off to barf when she sees her partner, an older guy, has a lot of back hair.
The only other adult character of note is the lit teacher Ms. Gentry (Waltrip, Nights in White Satin) who takes the subs on an impromptu field trip to a nude beach. Yep, they have those in Greece! Didn’t you see Summer Lovers? A surprise birthday party for Zigs is the setting for a weird number where subs and preens briefly unite to dance to some generic 80s synth-pop song. Of course, the two cliques will ultimately set aside their differences to work together in getting rid of Crawley once and for all upon learning of his illegal extracurricular criminal activities.
Directed by Dimitri Logothetis (Slaughterhouse Rock), Pretty Smart is an odd duck of a movie. A lot of it has to do with its tonal unevenness. It’s a teen comedy that takes a dark turn with Crawley’s dirty misdeeds. It casts a pallor over the otherwise lighthearted female-driven snobs vs. slobs tale, tale being the key word. Tale as in fairy tale, that is. By way of a narrative framing device, it’s presented as a story being told to guests at a birthday party for kids. Then it gets bizarre with the late, late introduction of Count Hawke (producer Solomon), the rich weirdo who owns the property. It has to be seen to be believed.
For the most part, Pretty Smart is an enjoyable affair if you like 80s-era teen sex comedies with lots of T&A&B. I kid you not, future Penthouse Pet Smith cannot keep her clothes on. Her body is pretty much the extent of her “performance”. If the Oscars had a category for that, she’d get it.
To be fair, the acting in Pretty Smart isn’t all that bad. Not all of it anyway. Fisher is appealing as a punk girl with brains, a rebel with a clue, always fighting against what other people want her to be. Lorient, as the perfect sister, doesn’t get a whole lot to do. One of the movie’s failings is introducing the twins’ sisterly rivalry as a major plot point only to more or less drop it once they fall in with their respective cliques. It comes up occasionally, but never in way that’s important to the plot.
Cole exudes slime as creepy-crawly Crawley. Arquette is quite good in her first film role (it was made before NOES 3) even if the screenplay denies her character any form of development. Why is she called Zero? It’s never explained. What Zigs did to get her sent to AaWeiglby is also never explained. All we know is it’s something that got her arrested. Waltrip has some good moments as the sympathetic teacher who allows her students to do book reports on The Story of O and The Big Sleep.
It has its problems, but Pretty Smart is pretty good. It has a few good laughs, a lot of pretty girls, a sweet opening credits sequence teeming with 80s-era music video production values (check out those rad computer graphics!) and a cool theme song (“Pretty Smart”) sung by Fisher herself, apparently a woman of many talents. It has enough going for it to make it worth checking out.
