The Good Student

The Good Student

source: The Good Student

A lonely teacher. A blonde student. A kidnapping . Good premises for a reasonable film but, maybe, not enough for decent development of story. I saw this film being teacher myself and I recognized crumbs of teachers life, especially for meritous work of Tim Daly. Unfortunatelly, , it is obvious , the director knows not use the poential of story. The development is poor, the result - just modest. Maybe, to high effort to convince the viewer and not the most inspired tools and skills for that.

This black comedy, kind of in the spirit of "Election", was only released on DVD several years after it was made and under the misleading title "The Good Student". It's a rare movie that instead of having a traditional hero, has more of a flawed "anti-hero", an unpopular high-school teacher (Tim Daly), who is as absorbed in his rather boring subject (US history) as any high-school teacher, but also harbors a not-so-hidden crush on one of his female students (Hayden Pantierre--I suppose it's kind of hard to blame him there though). After he gives her an ill-advised ride home and ends up kissing her, she mysteriously disappears, and he finds himself the prime suspect. The movie stacks the deck here quite a bit by casting the good-looking and fairly young Daly in the role and also giving him a very attractive love interest more his own age (Paula Devocq). It would have been a lot more brave to cast a guy who LOOKS like a lecherous middle-age creep. He's also seems relatively noble compared to all the other characters in the movie--like the missing girls' father (William Sandler), a car salesman who seems to be using his daughter's disappearance to bolster his business, a cop (Dan Hedaya), who is both overzealous and incompetent, and another female student (Sarah Steele), who mocks "Mr. Gibbs" for his attraction to the missing girl and his interest in "barely-legal" *, but who turns out to have her own "Lolita" thing going on. The worst perhaps though is a sleazy fellow teacher who confides that he is exchanging grades for sex with his female students. This movie perpetuates the rather tiresome Hollywood myth that very many high-school teachers are, or would even want to, mess around with their students. Of course, not too many high-school students look like Pantierre, or even Steele. (Interestingly, Hayden Pantierre WAS high-school age when she made this movie, but she definitely doesn't look it. Steele, on the other hand, had played one of the more believable teen characters a few years earlier in "Spanglish" when she was in her "awkward years", but those years were obviously well behind her by this time). Like "Election", this movie does have some effective black comedy and satire, but it is a much more hit-and-miss affair. The movie also has a really great ending, but perhaps it is a little too subtle or ambiguous for many people to appreciate. All in all, this isn't a bad movie though.

Spoilers!!! So, was the janitor in on it or not? Because Mr. Gibb definitely kept her locked in the school basement or a storage room. Did he get anything for helping? How could he not know. Did Mr. Gibb end up keeping all the money? So many questions. Thanks!

It has some darkness, some mystery and this is Hayden Panettiere 9as Ally the student/cheerleader) at her hottest. She is thin, feminine, clean and flaunting it. Wow I was hard. TLDR? It is a great movie with some tension, some spookiness and sexiness too!

Mr Gibb would you like to take a seat over there? God damn man, someone get Chris Hanson on the line. Much like pewdiepie is the mr magoo of racism, the protagonist of The Good Student is the Mr magoo of inappropriate behaviour. Eyeballing, manhandling and other forms of harassment are the name of the game as our unlikely and unlikable hero stonewalls his way from awkward history teacher to social pariah to master manipulator in an ironic twist that this so called black comedy just doesn't pull off. What The Good Student has for entertainment value though is that central character Ronald Gibb comes off as an astounding creep whilst the film asks for our intimate sympathy for the way that life has dealt him a bad hand. However, dead wife or not, the guy is still a creep, readily prone to violence and quotes American presidents like an evangelist would the bible, or the current president. This borderline predator is portrayed as a hero and that's fantastic. I mean, that's just grand. The Good Student has some genuine merit to it such as it's engaging kidnapping plot and committed cast, but the central premise is so wrong and the unfolding of events so insane that the tonal shifts could simply not undergo as smoothly as the filmmakers would have wanted them to, which leaves to the film to having a lot of wtf about it and as a result, The Good Student is exactly the kind of film that made me want to start this series off in the first place. In conclusion, The Good Student as a quirky comedy wildly misfires and has moments that will have you questioning what you have just seen. It's an oddity that is free on Youtube by the way and I think is good for at least one watching.

Mr. Ronald Gibb (Tim Daly) is a depressed slovenly widowed high school history teacher. His students are bored. His neighbor Holly (Paula Devicq) is interested in him. He has a crush on popular cheerleader Ally Palmer (Hayden Panettiere). She's in a TV ad for her father (William Sadler)'s used car lot. Smart alec Amber (Sarah Steele) teases him about it. Ally breaks up with her boyfriend Brett and Gibb drives her home. Janitor Gabe (Dan Hedaya) notices them together. She gives him a kiss. Then she's kidnapped from her home. Amber publishes a picture of the kiss and Gibb is suspended from school. The production is a bit weak. Director David Ostry doesn't have a compelling style. The movie tries to be quirky but mostly fails. It's also not dark enough. I follow this for the kidnapping mystery but not much else.

It wasn't awful, but this movie is pretty forgettable. With only a couple of exceptions, the characters came off as two dimensional, their actions made no sense and seemed totally unrealistic. The actors did a passable job with what they had. The dialogue had a few chuckles but largely felt short of witty, and it couldn't seem to commit to comedy and instead comes off as a not so compelling drama with a few comic moments. I will say the end was unexpected to me, but it didn't really make up for the flaws. Of course, Hayden Panettierre is really hot, and if you enjoy looking at her this movie is probably worth seeing just for that.

After popular high school student Ally Palmer (an appealing performance by the insanely foxy Hayden Panettiere) goes missing, nerdy history teacher Ronald Gibb (an excellent and engaging performance by Tim Daly) becomes the prime suspect concerning her disappearance because he was the last person seen with her. Director David Osky and writer Adam Targum ably wring plenty of painfully funny humor out of Gibb's pathetically lackluster lot in life. Moreover, Osky and Targum not only handle the potentially offensive premise of an older man lusting after a younger girl in a tasteful, yet still hilarious manner, but also derive a considerable amount of sly satiric mileage out of the hypocrisy of certain people in the town and the shameless opportunistic manner in which they attempt to capitalize on Ally's misfortune. The low-key quirky tone and brisk pace keep this picture on a steady course from start to finish. Daly does a fine job of making his sadsack loser character sympathetic; he receives ace support from William Sadler as Ally's slick car salesman father Phil, Paula Devicq as smitten neighbor Holly, Sarah Steele as the brash and meddlesome Amber, John Gallegher Jr. as Ally's dumb boyfriend Brett Mullen, Brian Anthony Wilson as the hard-nosed Detective Dick Moon, and Dan Hedaya as amiable janitor Gabe. Jordan Lynn's glossy cinematography provides an attractive bright look. Randy Lee's jaunty score hits the sprightly spot. A neat little sleeper.