Critic Reviews

A splashingly pleasant little surprise.

Joanou, later to find greater exposure with the concert picture U2 Rattle and Hum and the Oldman/Penn crime movie State of Grace, directs with a lot of energy, but the material just isn't there.

Three O'Clock High is one of those ideas that must have sounded wonderful at one point, and to be fair it still sounds better than the pop-out plots of most teen-explo projects. It turns out, however, to have surprisingly little range. Once the story is under way, there's nowhere for it to go but home room, lunch and out the door. [13 Oct 1987, p.C7]

Obviously aware that he was hung out to dry with an awful script, director Phil Joanou tries to make up for this handicap with some startling camerawork. Much of it is overdone, but the result is one in which Joanou's visual style transcends the vapid script.

A director can get away with stick-figure characterizations in a 30-minute television show, but here it looks like he got Siemaszko to assume a browbeaten expression and Tyson to do his best imitation of a Neanderthal, then told them to "freeze" for the duration of the project. That may be filming, but it's not directing.

Unfortunately, Siemaszko's performance is less tour-de-force than schtick-de-sitcom.[9 Oct 1987]

The film jabs so relentlessly at the viscera that the audience is never allowed to notice anything independently; if Mr. Joanou wants you to spot a license plate, for instance, he drives the car right into a floor-level camera.

At the time, I was never interested in getting into a fight with the toughest kid in high school. And now that I'm not in high school, I am even less interested in seeing a movie on the subject, particularly a bad one.

Neophyte Joanou's camera is airborne so often it gives the impression Three O'Clock High was filmed between traffic reports by Chopper 8. It's an example of virtuoso film making solely for the sake of virtuosity. [9 Oct 1987, p.3D]