Ketrivie
It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
Guillelmina
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Kinley
This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows
tbyrne4
I saw this when it first came out and thought it was a laugh riot (I wasn't even a teenager yet) and just re-watched it again after many years. The screenplay is awesome. It's very funny. The movie's not nearly as funny as I remember. The acting is certainly a lot stiffer than I remember. But not bad. Basic premise is that Terri, a gorgeous but brainy senior is convinced her teachers aren't taking her seriously because she's a girl. While her parents are away she dresses up like a boy ("Terry") and spends two weeks at a nearby school to prove her point. It's mostly comedy of errors type stuff (nothing too raunchy) involving her sex-crazed younger brother, a hot-to-trot girl who falls for "Terry", and her superficial boyfriend who's oblivious to the fact that she's dressing up like a boy. She also meets a guy at the new school (Clayton Rohner) who she kind of takes under her wing and helps him get a prom date. Oh yeah, she also crosses paths with William "Karate Kid" Zabka as an iron pumping bully. What really surprised me about the film was how easily I was able to accept the Terri character as a boy. And yet, she and the Clayton Rohner character have a chemistry that's undeniable and quite touching. You can see her character slowly falling for him. It almost makes you wish that the director had focused less on the younger brother's hijinks and more on the relationship between Terri and Rohner. Quite a good movie.
evanston_dad
This is one of the lower-tier teen comedies from the 1980s, and it's not as well known as movies like "Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink" or other films about high-school angst, but it's one of my favorites.Terry Griffith, aspiring journalist, gets an early taste of sexism when an article she writes for an internship contest is passed over for an obviously inferior article written by boys, so she poses as Ralph Macchio and signs up at a rival high school, hoping to submit her article there and get it accepted. Things get complicated, as such things do, when she falls for a nerd who's actually kind of cool when you get to know him, and she becomes the target for the high school bully, played by William Zabka, who created a cottage industry out of playing the blonde jock high school bully in teen movies from the 80s, and who coincidentally also tormented Ralph Macchio in "The Karate Kid." Terry doesn't know much about being a boy, but never fear -- her little brother, who names his penis Spike, does, and he teaches her all the basics, like how to scratch her balls.Grade: A
queenb80
I've seen this film over one hundred times in my twenty-five years on this planet. It's not that it's my favorite movie. It's that no matter what day it is, at any given time this movie is showing. It's the story of Terri (the always pleasant (!sarcasm alert!) Joyce Heisser) a journalist with great fashion sense who chops off her hair and dresses as a guy to help her write a story. While playing the part of a guy she meets a nerd who she vows to help make cooler. The fact that they refer to this guy (Clayton Rhoner)as a nerd is insane. If anything this guy is cooler then everyone in this movie, but I digress...Rounding out the 80s cast is her little brother (Billy Jacoby) who makes it his goal to lose his virginity. Terri encounters a nemesis (William 'why-can't-I-play-the-nice-guy" Zabka) and manages to find her story somewhere between the sock in her pants and her Elvis Costello makeover. It's got a good soundtrack, a great fight scene and a nice scene where Terri flashes her...I don't want to give away the surprise.
kimann6293
I love this movie and will drop all that I am doing to watch it on T.V. Yet, yet, there is no reason I can see that I should love it so. The acting is bad, more like a junior high school play than a movie. The plot is far-fetched to say the least, the characters unlikeable and their motives questionable.Yet, there is something darkly fascinating as Terri transforms herself to Terri, the new "boy" at a high school that also has the pleasure of the bully being the same blond tormentor remembered fondly from "The Karate Kid".All I can say is perhaps the off centeredness of everything, plot, characters, acting, 80's cheese, it all gels into one fine film...a classic for the ages.