Three contrived "products" foisted on an unsuspected and ultimately unwilling American public. Some Hollywood exec in the 80s snorted so much cocaine he actually believed that McCarthy, a sniveling, rodent-faced nonentity, had star potential so they stuck the cipher in a series of unfunny sex comedies throughout the decade. In "Class," no-talent pretty boy Rob Lowe teams up with no-talent ugly boy McCarthy to embarrass poor Jacqueline Bisset. Ms Bisset, as Lowe's mother and the only interesting character in the entire film, looks as ravishing as ever, even as she strains under the effort of pretending Andrew McCarthy is sexy.
The plot, such as it is, reflects the 80s fascination with inherited wealth: middle-class McCarthy winds up at a prep school full of studdly preppies like Lowe, who are actually poor little rich boys (see? There's no point in envying the wealthy because money isn't everything!). A series of plot machinations throw McCarthy into a glass elevator with Bisset, where they have sex. (Warning: there are multiple shots of an unclothed McCarthy in this film. Not recommended for the faint of heart.) The movie's real dead point is the leaden sequence when Lowe brings little Andrew home with him, where our hero discovers that he's been . . . big fat shocker . . . bonking his roommate's mother! The bigger shock is that Bisset is a drunken (and apparently nearsighted) nymphomaniac who deserves more sympathetic treatment and better co-stars than she gets from this movie. The one semi-saving grace of this movie is that it's blessedly free from drawn-out confrontations. Perhaps they filmmakers realized their young stars had absolutely no capacity for dialogue (or they couldn't hire enough cue-card holders) so they kept the major plot changes brief: during a morning horseback ride, McCarthy asks Bisset: "how are you?" "Get out of my house," she sneers. Lowe is unhappy at home, so instead of spouting some monologue about his pain and alienation that would exhaust his meager abilities, he just sort of takes McCarthy onto a lake in a rowboat and puts on his poutiest face. "Class" managed to destroy Jacqueline Bisset's career, but unfortunately we were stuck with five more years of McCarthy until "Less Than Zero" finally killed him off. (Like a cockroach, Lowe survives.)
The plot, such as it is, reflects the 80s fascination with inherited wealth: middle-class McCarthy winds up at a prep school full of studdly preppies like Lowe, who are actually poor little rich boys (see? There's no point in envying the wealthy because money isn't everything!). A series of plot machinations throw McCarthy into a glass elevator with Bisset, where they have sex. (Warning: there are multiple shots of an unclothed McCarthy in this film. Not recommended for the faint of heart.) The movie's real dead point is the leaden sequence when Lowe brings little Andrew home with him, where our hero discovers that he's been . . . big fat shocker . . . bonking his roommate's mother! The bigger shock is that Bisset is a drunken (and apparently nearsighted) nymphomaniac who deserves more sympathetic treatment and better co-stars than she gets from this movie. The one semi-saving grace of this movie is that it's blessedly free from drawn-out confrontations. Perhaps they filmmakers realized their young stars had absolutely no capacity for dialogue (or they couldn't hire enough cue-card holders) so they kept the major plot changes brief: during a morning horseback ride, McCarthy asks Bisset: "how are you?" "Get out of my house," she sneers. Lowe is unhappy at home, so instead of spouting some monologue about his pain and alienation that would exhaust his meager abilities, he just sort of takes McCarthy onto a lake in a rowboat and puts on his poutiest face. "Class" managed to destroy Jacqueline Bisset's career, but unfortunately we were stuck with five more years of McCarthy until "Less Than Zero" finally killed him off. (Like a cockroach, Lowe survives.)