Here’s a post that makes sense for June. I have weird rules with regarding watching this since I’m not in school anymore nor am raising people who are. I can still watch it, but it doesn’t always happen. Now I can review it for this blog since someone from CSI: Cyber was in it so I might as well get to explaining what happened in this movie.
We begin in a desert somewhere with a huge antenna like for
a satellite TV there. People break into this place. The two men who work here
are knocked unconscious with some laser type thing. A man there named Fenwick
(I think) talks to his boss about setting up his base at Third Street School.
At the school, it is about time for the summer break and the
regular characters are seen some. The diggers are filling their holes in for
the year. King Bob has graduated and is passing on his reign to some other kid.
Randal talks to Ms. Finster about infractions that he notices various kids
doing. She doesn’t care as much as she’s busy with trying to sell back ice
cream that she kept from the kids there. He has dirt on everyone except TJ and
his friends who he hasn’t seen.
As it turns out, this group is out taking the ice cream from
Ms. Finster and they take it to the kids on the playground where everyone eats
it. Principal Prickly is then heard on the intercom telling the kids to ignore
Mr. Finster and eat all of the ice cream. He goes through a list of apologizes
as this is revealed to be TJ talking through one of Gretchen’s devices to make
him sound like the principal. That’s when the real principal shows up to where
TJ is.
Mr. Prickly wants to throw the book at TJ, but the clock
runs out and the school year ends. Even a lot of the staff winds up celebrating
with some of the lunch ladies wanting to keep corn chowder until the school
reopens in September. Am I the only one who always started school in August?
And school had never lasted as long as June for me.
TJ plans to have a lot of fun with his friends this summer,
but learns that all five of them are each going off to their own separate
camps. He feels blue and has nothing to do. His sister doesn’t care as much
about his plight as she’s busy working at Floppy Burger. His parents suggest
that he go on a play date with Randal and he actually starts to bike there. But
he stops upon seeing a strange green light from the school building. Maybe
someone just joined the 4400?
He runs back to tell his parents about this, but in his
rush, he hits the glass door and what he is saying is mistaken for delirium. He
had recorded himself on a tape witnessing an ugly bald guy guarding the school,
vans going into this place, and a safe being levitated with a green laser. He
tells the police, but they don’t take his concerns seriously either.
TJ sees Principal Prickly. At the golf course, TJ convinces
the principal to come to the school and they go there together. The principal
magically disappears at the door trying to get inside. I’ve never understood
this part. TJ feels that only his friends can help so he cons his sister Becky
into helping him since he has a copy of her diary that he threatens to put on
the internet.
First, he gets his friend LaSalle back from baseball camp.
LaSalle is having problems throwing the ball and is told to throw, not aim. TJ
shows off Mr. Prickly’s shoes that I know he left behind at the school but must
have gone back to get and were still there somehow despite being evidence. This
convinces LaSalle to join TJ in joining the others.
Next stop is space camp. Gretchen notices oddness with the
moon’s orbit. She is ignored. This is when Vince LaSalle and TJ show up. We
also see them quickly get Mikey, Speniel, and Gus. They look up the strange
men, but it only seems to his friends like these people are restocking the
supplies of the school as they see test scores and things written in Norwegian.
They even notice that Principal Prickly is there driving away, acting normal
and not missing. That’s when they all notice the satellite dish come up for a
moment there and are then convinced.
The gang is now convinced that Principal Prickly is now in
on this and seek to investigate what is going on with the school. They devise a
plan to have themselves at camp at day and back there at night to stakeout the
school. What they don’t know is that a person who used to be principal is among
one of the bad guys. During the day, TJ notices Mr. Prickly’s pants in the
dumpster. They are confirmed to be his pants by Gretchen that night. TJ had
seen someone in a mask of Prickly, impersonating his voice. What happened to
the real Mr. Prickly?
They think that Mr. Prickly is in school so they are going
into save him. Speniel thinks that it is weird to break into school instead of
out of school. Randal overhears this and gets Ms. Finster to help track and
follow them. TJ and the group get into the school. Ms. Finster isn’t able to
follow up the rope and later gets stuck in a window so Randal goes for help.
After dodging the men and going into their old room for a
while, the group follows the sounds of voices to the auditorium where they find
an angry man named Dr. Benedict in control of the goons here. He has issues
accepting the issues with their experiment while they move the moon with a
tractor beam. It fails before it goes the full distancing, leading Dr. Benedict
to put the lead scientist in detention, with me unsure of what it means in this
context.
The kids want to leave after having witnessed this so far,
but Mikey can’t hold a burp in and they fall out of the ducts into this room.
Most of them are able to escape the men, but TJ is caught and put in the room
where Mr. Prickly is. His friends run to the police, but they don’t believe
them. Dr. Benedict then talks to TJ and Mr. Prickly with it being revealed that
the two men know each other.
After Phillip Benedict leaves, Mr. Prickly explains that his
former mentor is a rogue teacher. It goes back to the old times when he worked
at Third Street School. Phillip was the youngest principal of the state and he
is concerned about recess distracting from the potential for high test scores.
That’s why he wants to get rid of recess entirely. But the superintendant stops
this, firing Phillip on the spot and openly replacing him with Mr. Prickly.
Phillip thinks that Mr. Prickly was gunning for his job. Phillip leaves with
him also being rejected by Ms. Finster, his onetime love.
Going back to the present, Randal and Ms. Finster also have
trouble getting the cops to believe their wild stories. TJ and Mr. Prickly
escape to the principal’s office where they find a walkie-talkie and the plan
to get rid of summer vacation. Gretchen is able to learn from notes that
Speniel stole that this relates to the moon and changing its orbit. While only
part of the message is relied to his friends, they do learn some of what is
going on.
Phillip catches TJ and Mr. Prickly, explaining that by
changing the moon’s orbit, he can get rid of summer vacation by turning the
world into ice and getting rid of the biggest recess of them all. TJ’s friends
are able to use his sister to get all of the kids from camp together and Gus
becomes the unlikely leader who unites all of the kids together in order to
take over the school. Their forces work against the men there while TJ and Mr.
Prickly were able to make their separate escape through keys carelessly left
out by Dr. Benedict. Most of them gather in the auditorium with Phillip
explaining that cold countries have some of the highest test scores which gives
him his belief that winter solves the issues.
Ms. Finster shows up with the teachers who apparently can
fight in ninja skills which leads to a big fight out among the people here. Dr.
Benedict tries to finish his project, but Vince is able to throw a ball at the
tractor beam and destroy it. Dr. Benedict feels that he’s ruined while the
others are happy. But isn’t the moon’s orbit still messed up? Can it be fixed?
Or do we not care about it? We’d hate for it to crash into the earth, splitting
up the human population into two different species.
Dr. Benedict is arrested with others going to jail as well.
People want to interview some of the people relating to the big story of them
saving the world. TJ decides to return his sister’s diary to her and then talks
some to Mr. Prickly again. He goes off to play with his friends who decide not
to return to camp for the summer after all.
Overall, this is a pretty good film. Back when I was a
student which included even during my time in college, I would watch this film
in May at the end of every school year. I don’t have to watch it once a year
anymore like I do other films. It seems like a good end to the series, even if
it isn’t. The actual end is Taking on the Fifth Grade. It works even if you
haven’t seen the series at all, although it clearly does work better if you
have seen it. You see who you need to of these characters. You also get to see
TJ’s sister for the only time. She’s even mentioned during one of the episodes
of the show.
Still, there are some issues with this film. The part where
Mr. Prickly dematerializes is kind of out there and the science fiction
elements seem to take the show out of where it normally is set. It can seem as
if the timeline is messed up with the summer having just started and school not
being out that long and yet it seems as if the summer break has gone on for a
while as well. I don’t believe that the school is empty during the summer as
that plot point doesn’t line up with reality. And I think that those are my
only concerns with the movie.
This is a good film and a good way to end the school year.
Maybe if I ever have kids in the future, I can go back to watching this film
more regularly during May and can only hope that it can work and make sense to
them without having seen the series. Of course, I could just watch it on my
own. And I have decided that I can watch this anytime throughout the year as
long as it is before the first back to school commercial of the year airs. I
hope that you enjoyed this blog post about a featuring Peter MacNicol. For now,
this is Adam Decker, signing off.
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