Class

Often funny, always telling, this is the kind of not- quite-successful comedy that is fraught with not-quite-intentional meaning. From the pun in the title to the echoes in the script, Class is a pop sociologist's dream. [22 July 1983]

McCarthy and Rob Lowe (as his roommate) carry most of the picture, and both acquit themselves reasonably well under the circumstances.

Another of those mildly titillating high-school films, soulless and self-satisfied, realising the youthful fantasy of being initiated into the joys of sex by an older woman.

Sniggery sex, adolescent male-bonding, casual drug use, the agonies of growing up, mistrust [to put it mildly] of the adult world, a yearning for material success and a corresponding distaste for anything that smacks of the "committed" 1960s - it's all here, supporting a plot so lunatic that it could have been assembled only in the backwards fashion outlined above. [22 July 1983, p.3-3]

Class, a sexual disillusion acted out at the prep school level, would be represented far more accurately by the one-word title "Crass." [22 July 1983, p.C4]

The unfortunate aspect of Class, which is glossier than Private Lessons and marginally more believable than My Tutor, is that its laughs are built around the suffering of a prime candidate for intensive therapy. Thus while the kids are watching one movie -- boy loses virginity, ya-hoo -- adults in the audience will be watching another -- wife and mother has an emotional breakdown at the hands, literally, of a 14-year-old. The latter, of course, is not funny. [25 July 1983, p.C6]

A vile concoction. [25 July 1983, p.75]