{"id":7025,"date":"2024-10-25T11:57:29","date_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=7025"},"modified":"2024-10-25T11:57:29","modified_gmt":"2024-10-25T15:57:29","slug":"pretty-smart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/25\/pretty-smart\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty Smart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Pretty Smart<\/strong> (1987)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 84 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, sexual content, language, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dimitri Logothetis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Dan Hoskins\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay Levy and Eddie Arkin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Dimitris Papakonstadis \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Release date: March 1987 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Only in the hedonistic 80s could a filmmaker get away with a movie like Pretty Smart<\/strong>, 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\u2019s beyond creepy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In most teen comedies, we\u2019d be talking about an authority figure of some sort who\u2019s constantly putting a damper on the kids\u2019 attempts at fun. That\u2019s not what we\u2019re dealing with in Pretty Smart<\/strong>. The headmaster of AaWeiglby, Richard Crawley (Cole, The Felony Squad), isn\u2019t 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 \u201cerotic art collectors\u201d 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\u2019t get made today. Can you imagine the backlash? Yikes!<\/p>\n

\u00a0The story centers on Zigs (Fisher, Stick), a rebellious teen whose parents decide to send her away to a prestigious boarding school along with her \u201cperfect\u201d twin sister Jennifer (Lorient) in order to curb her bad behavior. The school is divided into two cliques, \u201cpreens\u201d (the stuck-up popular girls) and \u201csubs\u201d (any girl that doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s determined to break. He doesn\u2019t know who he\u2019s dealing with, the poor dumb bastard.<\/p>\n

\u00a0That, of course, is a general overview of Pretty Smart<\/strong>. There\u2019s plenty else going on starting with some business about the school\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201centertain\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Dimitri Logothetis (Slaughterhouse Rock), Pretty Smart<\/strong> is an odd duck of a movie. A lot of it has to do with its tonal unevenness. It\u2019s a teen comedy that takes a dark turn with Crawley\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For the most part, Pretty Smart<\/strong> 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 \u201cperformance\u201d. If the Oscars had a category for that, she\u2019d get it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To be fair, the acting in Pretty Smart<\/strong> isn\u2019t 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\u2019t get a whole lot to do. One of the movie\u2019s failings is introducing the twins\u2019 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\u2019s important to the plot.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cole 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\u2019s never explained. What Zigs did to get her sent to AaWeiglby is also never explained. All we know is it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It has its problems, but Pretty Smart<\/strong> 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 (\u201cPretty Smart\u201d) sung by Fisher herself, apparently a woman of many talents. It has enough going for it to make it worth checking out.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pretty Smart (1987)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 84 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (nudity, sexual content, language, drug material)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Dimitri Logothetis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Dan Hoskins\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Jay Levy and Eddie Arkin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Dimitris Papakonstadis \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Release date: March 1987 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Tricia Leigh Fisher, Lisa Lorient, Brad Zutaut, Dennis Cole, Paris Vaughn, Kimberly B. Delfin, Patricia Arquette, Joely Fisher, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7372,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-comedies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Pretty-Smart-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7025"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7374,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7025\/revisions\/7374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}