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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - S 3 Mins Read

    School Daze (1988)

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    Spike Lee followed his successful debut She’s Gotta Have It (1986) with this musical comedy set in the all-black white-financed Mission College, poking satirical fun at campus capers while tackling class and colour distinctions which divide the college into two mutually exclusive categories: the haughty, lighter-skinned students who are called “wannabees” (they “wannabee” as bourgeois and white as possible) and the darker-skinned youths who embrace blackness.

    Upwardly mobile and politically conservative, the wannabees are led by the dictatorial Julian ‘Big Brother Almighty’ Eaves (Giancarlo Esposito). Demanding that Mission College divest itself of its investments in South Africa, the darker-skinned kids rally around a moral banner raised by student activist Dap Dunlap (Laurence Fishburne).

    Besides directing, writing and producing the film, Lee turns in a brief but finely tuned comedic performance as Half Pint, a hapless fraternity pledge who is caught and almost crushed between his loyalties to his activist cousin Dap and Julian, the supreme commander of the prestigious Gamma Phi Gamma frat.

    Besides being far too long, though, the film is too fragmented as it shifts from serious stinging commentary to overly lavish musical production numbers.

    Overkill abounds in a 1940s musical number set in a beauty salon where the women wage an all-out song and dance battle over the best way to wear their hair, natural or processed. It’s painfully self-indulgent.

    Ossie Davis is superb in a bit part as a football coach delivering a hilarious locker room speech to his winless team. And singer Phyllis Hyman looks spectacular and sings beautifully in a scintillating uncredited cameo.

    Samuel L Jackson appears in an early small role outside a chicken shop.

    Dap Dunlap
    Laurence Fishburne
    Julian ‘Big Brother Almighty’ Eaves
    Giancarlo Esposito
    Jane Toussaint
    Tisha Campbell-Martin
    Rachel Meadows
    Kyme
    President McPherson
    Joe Seneca
    Odrie McPherson
    Ellen Holly
    Cedar Cloud
    Art Evans
    Coach Odom
    Ossie Davis
    Da Fella Grady
    Bill Nunn
    Da Fella Monroe
    James Bond III
    Da Fella Jordan
    Branford Marsalis
    Da Fella Edge
    Kadeem Hardison
    Da Fella Booker T
    Eric Payne
    Gammite Half-Pint
    Spike Lee
    Gammite Doo-Doo Breath
    Anthony Thompkins
    Gammite Double Rubber
    Guy Killum
    Gammite Mustafa
    Dominic Hoffman
    Gammite Yoda
    Roger Guenveur Smith
    Gammite Sir Nose
    Kirk Taylor
    Gammite Mussolini
    Kevin Rock
    Gammite Slim Daddy
    Erik Dellums
    Cecilia 
    A.J. Johnson
    Paula
    Cassi Davis
    Tina
    Michelle Bailey
    Leeds
    Samuel L. Jackson
    Moses
    Edward G. Bridges
    Eric
    Dennis Abrams
    Spoon
    Albert B. Cooper IV
    Virgil Cloyd
    Gregg Burge
    Buckwheat
    Cinqué Lee
    Perry
    Kasi Lemmons
    Muriel
    Toni Ann Johnson
    Carla
    Paula Birth
    Roz
    Tracy Robinson

    Director
    Spike Lee

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