Learning Curve

Learning Curve Gets Down to Business!
Some times we just have to cut to the chase and get down to business. "Learning Curve" does just that - writer/director Andy Anderson has a particular take on life and it vividly shows in this film. "Curve" is not a movie you see every day. The market forces would never create a story like this as it should be - this is where independent filmmaking shines. So, a high school teacher can't teach his students - they just don't want to learn (not that they CAN'T learn!)...I've been witness to situations similar to this in my high school days. I was put in low-level applied classes with all the goof-offs and Dopeheads and Metal Heads: all who didn't want to learn a thing. Needless to say I wasn't one of them, I did want to learn, but spending three years with these types of students left me with a sour after taste in my mouth in regards to the public school system...So, now comes "Learning Curve" and with this teacher's method of teaching, I applaude...

Slightly fresh slant on a standard B movie theme
A typical B-rate movie that does show a few flashes of originality. Basically, a substitute teacher at the "high school from Hell" decides to take matters into his own hands. He ends up kidnapping a group of 7 of the worst students and locks them in steel cages in rural Texas. In the midst of nudity, deprivation and electric shock disipline, they finally accept that they must learn or die! The characters, although grossly exaggerated, are really despicable enough to make the mistreatment at the hands of their captor almost enjoyable. From Bob Sage in Las Vegas

I've seen all 3 versions of this film
And this is the weakest. This film began some years ago as Detention, a black black-comedy with lots of gritty raw footage. A movie that grabbed you by the lapels and shook you, it precluded all mealy-mouthed hem-hawing about good and evil. But that same year, another film with the same name was released, and this Detention got lost. Andy recut it, chopped about 30 minutes, gave it a new name, and offered Very Special Ed, a brilliant, scathing, frightening movie that worked in every direction. I had thought the original unimprovable. I was wrong.

But now he has recut it again, and it is diminished by the newest rearrangements. Some scenes were (I think) reshot, and they seem curiously without energy, as if everyone felt they had done this once already. The forcefulness is lost, and the new ending, while similar to the previous versions, again, comes out a bit tepid.

A wonderful film is in here, this just isn't it. Still pretty good, with some flashes that are so...

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