2/8/07: School Spirit (1985)Despite all our hard work, Leftists are generally at a loss when it comes to complaining about blatant conservative bias in Hollywood. The only real movie they’ve gotten to invoke is 2005’s
Just Like Heaven. That had the good fortune of showing up around the same time as the Republican Senate’s bizarre mishandling of the big Terri Schiavo controversy.
For male readers who didn’t have a girlfriend in September of 2005,
Just Like Heaven was about a guy who falls in love with the ghost of a woman in his apartment. The spirit turns out to be a doctor (Reese Witherspoon) who’s in a coma—and, it turns out, is about to have her plug pulled. A lot of romantic comedy crap ensues as the audience endures what would be the most Catholic film released in theaters until
Pan’s Labyrinth. We’ll have to get to
Pan’s Labyrinth eventually.
Anyway, we feel sorry for Leftists and their one-note crusade, so they can also start bitching about
School Spirit. This sex comedy is about a college student named Billy Batson (that’s the film’s only comic book reference) who gets hit by a truck. The same thing happens to Reese Witherspoon in
Just Like Heaven. The difference is that Billy gets hit by a truck because he’s so preoccupied by his quest for a condom.
A brain-dead Billy ends up being kept alive to be harvested for body parts. Nobody at the hospital notices that he’s valiantly clutching that condom. Billy’s our kind of guy. His dead Uncle Pinky shows up to escort Billy to Heaven, but the nephew pleads for just one more day. He wants another shot at that hot blonde who was waiting while Billy was out getting killed for a condom. Also, the campus is about to mark Hog Day. That’s a special occasion that mainly seems to be held to irk the college president.
School Spirit has one of the cutest female casts in the history of moronic ’80s sex comedies, and it doesn’t go to waste as Billy uses his ghostly invisible powers to go into the sorority showers. It seems Billy can shift from ghostly presence to passing for human whenever necessary. We don’t know how closely that follows Catholic theology. And while that condom got Billy killed, he’s allowed to carry it around in the afterlife. On the other hand, he gives the condom away to another couple in what’s clearly a charitable act.
The important thing is that
School Spirit is a film where you should only pull the plug when using the term as a sexual metaphor. Also, it’s the rare campus comedy where the college’s uptight Young Republican turns out to be a pretty good guy. As mentioned, that fiasco with Terri Schiavo left us kind of agnostic on the entire Big Issue. At least a film like
School Spirit keeps the debate interesting.
Make it your own: We had no idea
School Spirit was
available on DVD. We’ve already ordered our copy. That
VHS tape is practically worn out. We mentioned the cute cast, but did we note that it’s mostly obscure actresses? Somebody contact the National Film Registry, because this one needs to be preserved.
