The Principal

James Belushi, looking slightly less fat than he does today, is a boozey, divorced teacher who gets into a fight with his ex-wife's lawyer in a bar and then, mysteriously, is out on his ass as principal of a gang-infested, rundown school nobody seems to want to fix. He strides the halls not like Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me, or like Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver. He's scared, but he still strides the halls, storms classes, forcibly tutors kids to read and do their homework, cajoles his teachers. The only problem is, every time he gets somewhere, someone else, at the hands of rogue drug-dealer ex-student Victor, winds up beaten up, raped, or, eventually, murdered.

The movie doesn't try to be anything else but an eighties flick, complete with cornball musical interludes. Add to that a principal who mixes chocolate powdered milk with Coke and beer, rides a motorcycle in his school's ratty neighborhoods, and gets a recently turned-around kid to high five him "down low/too slow" and you've got all the makings of an hour and fifty minute music video which is not so much an homage to teachers, or education, but to a down-to-earth tough guy doing what needs to be done to establish a status quo. Great stuff. Louis Gosset, Jr., is great, too--he spends equal time cajoling and berating Belushi for his dumb-ass bravery. The film won't create any new teachers, but it probably did pave the way for movies like The Substitute. We apparently don't have enough tough guy movies. We need Tough Guys Who Read movies, too.

Bonus: Check out a young Esai Morales as a student in this turkey. "Man, do you know where you are? You're at Brandel. Ain't you heard what they said about this place? Garbage never leaves the dump." Thank God good actors eventually do.