Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Assassination of a High School President

Release Date: October 6th, 2009 (DVD)

Genre: Comedy / Crime / Mystery

Stars: Bruce Willis, Mischa Barton, Reece Thompson, Michael Rappaport

Synopsis: A school newspaper reporter gets his big break when he outs the student body president for stealing the SAT tests from the principal's office but further investigation suggests a frame job and a much bigger scandal.

AltAss Ratings (On a scale of 1 to 5 asses)

Plot:                                           

A well crafted premise and certainly a strength for the film.

Writing / Production:            

At times "Assassination of a High School President" is down right entertaining and others it is completely boring and uninteresting.  The biggest criticism for this film is that it does not harness momentum efficiently and winds up a series of peaks and valleys.

Acting:                                  
          
It is a shame that Michael Rappaport was not used more often as he was absoultely hillarious.  Bruce Willis is very nice in his role as the principal but the rest of the players which include the leads left a bit to be desired.

Originality:                           

"Assassination of a High School President" feels a lot like a bad tribute to classic detective mystery movies and if it had done enough to more closely mimic that genre it would have been a pretty novel concept.

Overall:                                   

This movie put a lot of stock in a fantastic finish and while the ending was pretty good that doesn't quite make up for the fact that the audience has to labor through a painfully hit or miss feature length fare to get there. 

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