Classic Movie Review: Three O'Clock High

Three O’Clock High is a movie about toxic masculinity. It may not have been seen that way in 1987 when the film arrived in theaters, but today there is no denying it. Toxic Masculinity is defined in modern social science as traditionally male behaviors in relation to the expression of dominance. Such behaviors are detrimental to mental health and often times are expressed in actions or behaviors that are sexist, misogynistic, racist, or homophobic. Three O’Clock High ticks almost all of those hateful behaviors in just over 90 minutes of screen time.

It’s not a great day to be Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko). Jerry woke up late for school, nearly has a devastating car accident with his little sister (Stacy Glick) and best friend (Ann Ryan) in the car and when he arrives at school, his problems are only beginning. A new kid is starting school on this day, a guy named Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson). The stories about Buddy are legendary and range from him having decked a football coach to him having broken a kid’s neck just for touching him.

Jerry, meanwhile, just wants to get through the day but that becomes a challenge when he attempts to engage the new kid, forgetfully pats the new kid on the shoulder and is subsequently challenged to a fight at 3 PM in the school parking lot. The rest of the day is centered on Jerry’s vain attempts at getting out of the fight which include hiring a big tough football player to fight on his behalf, to getting detention for kissing a teacher, to helping the bully cheat on a math test.

None of Jerry’s schemes work because, of course, without the fight at the end of the movie, there isn’t much of anything for the movie to do. Buddy has no nuance to explore, he's just a bully with no real motivation. Jerry, on the other hand, is a dweeb who happens to be the lead in the movie thus giving him secret movie underdog powers that will come in handy during the big fight scene at the end of Three O’Clock High.

That’s your plot and it’s surrounded on all sides by the signposts of Toxic Masculinity. The beef between Jerry and Buddy has the basic hallmarks of gay panic with Jerry making the mistake of trying to start a conversation with Buddy while the two stand at a urinal leading Buddy to ask, in typically 80s fashion, “are you a faggot?” Buddy is quick to deny being gay but then as he attempts to brush past the faux pas, he touches Buddy on the arm and Buddy reacts by calling for the fight.

The gay panic stuff extends to other characters who call Jerry a fag or ask if he’s fag and so on. Then there is the misogyny. Three O’Clock High reduces all of the female characters to sexist cliches of 80s movies and pawns of Jerry's story. There is the sassy little sister, the tomboy love interest labeled immediately as flighty because she talks to a spirit guide, and most damningly, there is a teacher who rather than punish Jerry for his boorishness in class, and especially for forcing a kiss on her in front of the whole class, is turned on by Jerry’s toxic take-what-I-want attitude.

It’s the most reductive of male sexual fantasies, the disgusting idea that any woman wants to sleep with any man and all a man has to do is take them. It was recently seen in the controversial film Mother(!) wherein Jennifer Lawrence is forcibly taken by Javier Bardem who is both her characters' husband and a supposed stand-in for God in the story. The same thing rears its ugly head in my recent classic review of one of my favorite movies of all time, Blade Runner, which features a scene between Harrison Ford and Sean Young that legit made my skin crawl. And that’s in a movie I truly love which made it somehow more disturbing because I felt somewhat like I needed to defend the scene in order to like the movie. I can't defend it, but I can't deny loving that movie either.

Three O’Clock High is far too juvenile to genuinely push buttons or be honestly provocative. No, this film engages in only the most prurient of male fantasy film-making. Late in the movie, after the fight with Buddy, the teacher character I mentioned earlier comes back into the movie and tries to throw herself at Buddy in front of a crowd of students. He doesn’t reject her but only because she’s now one of three women to throw themselves at him in under 3 minutes because all women want is the simple notion that a man is an alpha male.

I hate Three O’Clock High for its Toxic Masculinity. But I also hate that it overshadows a surprisingly dynamic piece of filmmaking. Director Phil Joanou, who’s best known for his work on U2 music videos, and Cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, the man behind Men in Black, craft some fun and clever visuals in Three O'Clock High. Joanou has a love for strange, comic, camera angles and Sonnenfeld finds some unique and quite funny ways to frame the film’s gags. There are legitimately funny moments in Three O’Clock High that come solely from the odd camera angles.

Too bad then that the toxicity of the film’s core is so overwhelming that it makes everything else in Three O’Clock High harder to appreciate.