Teachers (1984)

Directed by Arthur Hiller. Starring Nick Nolte, JoBeth Williams, Judd Hirsch, Allen Garfield, Ralph Macchio, Lee Grant, Laura Dern, William Schallert, Richard Mulligan, Royal Dano, Morgan Freeman, Crispin Glover. [R]

“It’s not a school, it’s a loony bin!” Director Hiller once again tackles acidic satire targeting a major institution (after The Hospital from 1971), and as flawed as the Oscar-winning script by Paddy Chayefsky was in the older production, at least it wasn’t as obvious or overwritten as scribe W. R. McKinney’s work is here. An inner-city Ohio high school is being sued for graduating kids who received a piss-poor education, and while administrators scramble to cover their own asses and long-suffering teachers try to retain their sanity within an indifferent bureaucracy and classrooms full of unruly youths, Nolte’s burned-out educator might be the last person left to hold it all together, even when he starts dating a former student (Williams), helps a current student (Dern) get an abortion after getting knocked up by the gym teacher, and stands up to the heartless superintendent (Grant) and vice principal (Hirsch). Far too disorganized in its storytelling and too pat in its resolutions; it’s the kind of movie that thinks it’s being challenging and provocative, but just forces easy answers to glib problems, and can’t decide if we should be taking it seriously or as a blackly comic farce (consider the cheap parody found in the sketchy sub-plot where Mulligan’s mental patient stumbles into teaching history). Look for character actors Anthony Heald and George Dzundza in brief appearances.

42/100