The Principal Review

In the mould of ‘gotta be cruel to be kind’ teacher/pupil flicks, this time featuring Jim Belushi as the eponymous high-school principal who eventually wins his charges’ respect by the deft application of a baseball bat. Although the film’s inversion of the usual good morals winning out against bad that often transpires in this kind of schmaltz, the violence and lack of compromise that replaces it never feels like a triumph. Fighting fire with fire, the principal merely breaks the will of his pupils through a combination of brutal dialogue and equally caveman-like diplomacy, leaving the audience in a similar frame of mind by the end of the film