Private Lessons (1981)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Simply A Masterpiece

Good movie but grossly overrated

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Watching Private Lessons made me feel most sorry for young Patrick Piccininni who is the best friend of Eric Brown. While he gets all that experience and adventure with Sylvia Kristel as the new French housekeeper, his friend has this little old lady as his housekeeper.Both these kids have all the graces of the more sophisticated kids from Porky's. When we meet them they are ogling the slightly older girls at a neighboring pool party. Later Brown gets to spend a few weeks alone while dad played by Ron Foster gets in a little business with pleasure. Hard to believe that even with the idle rich a kid would be essentially unsupervised over a summer. Not like Foster couldn't afford anything. Not even a relative of some kind.So Brown is left alone with Sylvia Kristel and she seduces him. But it's all part of a plot to part him from a lot of his trust fund money. Guiding the plot is family chauffeur Howard Hesseman who does have a few good lines and some great facial expressions.All in all the whole thing is rather puerile and stupid. A rich kid's Porky's.

Sweet and awkward sex-starved rich fifteen-year-old Phillip Fillmore (an engagingly gawky performance by Eric Brown) gets a crash course in love and sex from alluring French housekeeper Nicole Mallow (a perfectly cast Sylvia Kristel of "Emmanuelle" fame). Unbeknownst to Phillip, Nicole is being forced to seduce him by sleazy blackmailing chauffeur Lester Lewis (nicely played to the smarmy hilt by Howard Hesseman). While the central premise sounds distasteful, fortunately both director Alan Myerson and writer Dan Greenburg manage to make things breezy and silly enough to ensure that the story never becomes too raunchy or offensive. The overall good-natured tone along with the zippy pace and blithely lowbrow humor keep everything light and amusing throughout. Moreover, you just have to admire the giddy audacity of the filmmakers to treat statutory rape in such an amiably goofy and jocular manner; nowadays this basic male adolescent fantasy plot would be the subject of a totally serious Lifetime network made-for-TV feature. But back in the carefree early 80's people were more easygoing and hence this flick is a totally delightful tongue-in-cheek product of its time. Brown and Kristel make for appealing leads, with funny support from Patrick Piccininni as Phillip's fat horny best buddy Sherman and Ed Begley Jr. as Jack Travis, a tennis instructor who's persuaded by Phillip and Nicole to pose as a tough homicide detective. Supplying some nice eye candy are Pamela Jean Bryant as the fetching Joyce and Meridith Baer as uptight, but enticing teacher Miss Phipps. Of course, we also got a sizable smattering of yummy female nudity and some sizzling soft-core sex. Further galvanized by a first-rate rock soundtrack and given an attractive glossy look by cinematographer Jan de Bont, this baby hits the spot as a good deal of infectiously naughty fun.

I remember seeing "Private Lessons" when it first came out. I later looked at the book it was based on. The book is more serious and darker.Needless to say, unless you are 100% gay, this is a nice dream. I was kind of let down that they didn't live happily ever after together.There is a double standard in this movie. What would people have thought if Lester had seduced Phily? Or if Lester had seduced a girl? A woman seducing a girl would have been accepted.I've read that it is more frequent for women who have sex with underage boys to be taken to the courts. It's not seen as a "Private Lessons" thing anymore by others. In Canada, the age of consent starts at 14. It might change with a new government.

This is a classic 70s/80s 'hot for teacher' movie about a teenage boy whose sexy housekeeper seduces him. The plot, mediocre at best. The acting, salvageable. The art direction...wait a second! This movie is about recollecting those teenage years with your 70's glasses on, not about quality film-making. It's about T&A and tan lines, cheesy dialog, and being able to see boom mics in the shot. Nothing but FUN! Don't listen to all the 'boring' people who weighed in on this movie, they shouldn't have watched it in the first place. I hate that PC people like that are actually out there comparing these types of movies to Oscar contenders. News brief: THIS MOVIE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO AND ISN"T TRYING BE IN THAT LEAGUE. This is plain old fun and teen fantasy. All this crap about 'oh that poor boy' is ridiculous. There isn't a 16 year old boy in the world that wouldn't give his left arm to be in this situation.If you have fun with the 70s and 80s and you can enjoy low budget, cheesy films...see this. If you take life too seriously and suffer allergic reaction to nudity and political INcorrectness...avoid at all costs.