Sometimes the shoddy camera low-budget thing works (everyone loved "Once," right?), but more often than not, and especially in the case of "High School Ripped Me A New One," bad filmmaking is usually accompanied by bad acting. After viewing, patrons walk away with the realization that 90 minutes of their lives are gone and can never be reclaimed.
The film, which played the festival circuit back in 2005 and 2006, has been released online in its entirety and is streaming at Google Video.
David Arnold and Andrew Sloan (the latter played by Cameron Washington, the movie's writer, producer and director) are two geeky high schoolers desperate for acceptance among their school's token jock cool guys. For the first third of the movie, they embark on various misadventures, which consist largely of run-ins with bullies and awkward male bonding moments.
Eventually, the plot picks up (if only slightly) when a couple of mobsters rob the bakery where Arnold works. The cash somehow winds up in the back of Arnold's car and, like magic, the newly moneyed boys find instant popularity. Thus ensues the movie's transformation into a painful amalgamation of the plotline of "Blank Check."
A movie as bad as "High School Ripped Me A New One" doesn't deserve much praise or attention from the film world, and if it were released to audiences the old-fashioned way, it would likely be forgotten by the time the credits finished rolling. But because the movie is one of the first to stream online in its entirety rather than being released in theaters or on DVD, it is attracting far more viewers than it ought to.
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