Watching Prep School my mind hearkened back to Scent Of A Woman and the fact that more than anything else Taylor Lambert needed someone like Al Pacino's blind colonel in his corner. He was going up against one of the training grounds for America's elite and he needed someone good to be speaking up for him.
That's what Prep School is about, it's a look at one of those exclusive schools where old connections and old or new money is needed especially if you get yourself into a jackpot. It's also about the struggles of an intensely moral young man who has taken a good look at his peers and commits an act of singular bad taste by exposing them for what they are.
Stephen Brookins who is a star rugby player one night walks in and finds his girlfriend en flagrato with another kid. He goes all to pieces and quits the team. Teammate Austin Scott decides how dare he quit the team and let his fellow players down. Another teammate Ben Bellamy decides it's the girl who needs to be taught a lesson good and proper. Scott with a few friends and Bellamy zero in on their targets and Brookins and Carly Schroeder head for disaster.
Brookins and Schroeder did some stupid things themselves, but nothing warranted what happens to them.
All this is observed by Lambert who knows all who are involved and he commits a grand gesture that might just kill his chances for mixing with the elite.
I tell you I would not have wanted to have gone to this school. High school was hard enough without the pressure these kids are under and the way it makes them behave.
Note in keeping with times this Prep School is coed. Can hardly imagine Groton or Phillips Exeter being coed, but the times they are a changing.
Interesting also how the headmaster Lewis Sims and Austin Scott are both black. Couldn't have happened in the old days, but note how both Scott especially adopt the attitudes and traditions of the place.
In the end you hope that this will not scar Lambert. His ambition is to be a writer and writers if they have the natural talent are made through their life experience. Prep School is not necessarily your ticket to the good life.
This was an amateur production to be sure from a lot of film students, but it was far above the average for tyros. The writing was superb and the characters created were people you cared about. Prep School is a real undiscovered diamond in the rough.
