The Substitute 2: School's Out (1998)

The movie is wildly uneven but lively and timely - in its own surreal way

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I started watching this on TV tonight and after being amazed that even a TV movie this bad would make it on to the BBC ended up watching nearly the whole thing.First of all, how many high schools anywhere have their own guard and barbed wire above the entrance to the third floor? And kids whose main purpose for being in school is to take out their History teacher?!! When they're not car-jacking and bringing their new wheels into school to have them modded in 'shop' that is. Then there's the guy who takes Shop, played by BD Wong. Now if you want a bloke who's meant to be so evil that when one of his pupils gets killed (whilst stealing a car for him) he says 'that's the first piece of good news i've had today', why cast a camp bloke of 5'4' as the said baddie?! His tight jumpers and muscular physique make him look more like the barman from the local gay bar than some evil car-jacking mastermind who dabbles in CDT, but there you go.The shoot-outs (inside the school?!) are classic in their own, badly choreographed, pump thousands of bullets at a target ten metres away and miss, then finally take out the target and mutter something witty like 'one down, three to go', way. Then our hero Treat Williams finally gets cornered by four gun toting bad guys and guess what saves him? A couple of canisters releasing what looks like slowly wafting dry ice so that he can make his escape. Then there's the Vietnam vet janitor who has his own war-chest of old military weapons in the basement, and a semi automatic rifle in the cupboard?!! This film teaches that if you want to get the respect of your knife wielding, car-jacking, substitute teacher killing pupils, then the best way to do so is kill a load of their mates and then knock off their 'shop' teacher for good measure. Then you can walk off, laughing weakly with your adoring niece, as the pupils who have just watched one of their teachers get killed by another stand around mouthing 'wow'. I really hope that whoever wrote this doesn't go into politics.Oh and Treat Williams, although he does a good job of spouting forth diatribes whilst messing around with a yo-yo, is as wooden an action hero as I've ever seen.If you want to see a really, really bad film that shouldn't even have made it to 'TV Movie' status then you must watch this. Otherwise avoid it at all costs.

What happened to him? He was very sexy in this film, decked out in shiny black nylon (I think) trousers and a black leather jacket. Very cool indeed. Pity Treat Williams hid all his sex appeal by wearing a tie.Story was extremely predictable, that is, implausible. As usual, the solution to violence is more violence.

I am completely aghast that anyone living or dead ever enjoyed this film for the reasons the makers wished. The fact that it was never released in theaters should tip you off in the first place that this movie is quite poorly written, acted and edited. Things happen and you have no idea why, people say and do things that are never explained, certain elements of the story are left vastly untold. In short, many loose ends are not tied up and many more are simply ignored. And if you're thinking that this will be spoofing the fact that it is bad and making jokes, think again. This movie was meant to be an action/adventure type thing, but it ended up being a comedy; and there are no intentional jokes. My advice is, if you want a good laugh at an excessively bad film, rent this, otherwise, don't waste your money.

I was not expecting a lot from this movie as it is a TV B movie but i found it really entertaining. Ok , lets face it , the story line stinks , the acting stinks and the dialogue is even worse but it is still entertaining! The thing i did like about this film is that the director was not afraid to portray specific races as the trouble makers, there is nothing worse than a Politically correct Hollywood movie. At the end of the day this is just the same as Deathwish,The Exterminator or 187 ,a vigilante shootem up movie. 6 out of 10