Recess: School's Out - Plot

Plot

School's out at Third Street School, but T.J. is upset because his friends have all decided to go to various camps to plan for their futures. T.J. unhappily rides around town, doing things by himself. He even very reluctantly agrees to hang out with Randall. On his way there, he notices something going on at the school. T.J. sneaks inside and finds the school using a tractor beam to levitate a safe. Panicked, he tries to tell his parents and the police, but they do not believe him. When he gets Principal Prickly to come to see what's going on, he is electrocuted and dematerialized as soon as he puts his key in the door, leaving only his shoes behind as evidence. T.J. is now frustrated because his parents won't listen and neither will the police. He decides he has to round up the gang and uses his sister Becky's diary to blackmail her into driving him to all the camps to pick up his friends.

T.J. and his friends steal a box of documents, but filled with no information, T.J's friends then accuse him of making up an idea just to bring them back. T.J. tells them he really did see Prickly disappear but Gus points out that Prickly had just got into a car and driven off. The gang are about to head back to their camps when they see the tractor beam come out of the school and shoot out a green laser and agree that something is going on in the school. The gang have a stakeout at T.J.'s treehouse and enjoy eating snacks and singing a song they first heard after they were in Kindergarten. The next day, T.J. finds Prickly's golf pants in a dumpster and also sees the bald guy he saw guarding the school pull off a mask of principal Prickly's face, showing that this was indeed him pretending to be Prickly when Gus pointed out the other Prickly getting into a car.

The gang finds a note in the pocket of Prickly's golf pants saying "HELP ME!" on it; this makes T.J. and his friends decide to break into the school to save him. While there, they are caught spying and flee. T.J. is captured and is put in a storage room where he finds Prickly all tied up in thick ropes to a chair and his mouth gagged. A man named Dr. Phillium Benedict enters the room to speak to them.

After Benedict leaves, Prickly relates how, back in the spring of 1968, he and Benedict were best friends. Benedict then became the principal of Third Street School. During a private conversation with Prickly, Benedict showed him that he had intended a move to abolish recess as a way to improve test grades. Prickly went to the superintendent as a means of convincing Benedict to change his mind. The superintendent instead fired him and promoted Prickly to principal. To make matters worse, Benedict's girlfriend, Muriel P. Finster, broke up with him, driving Benedict into a hateful vengeance. Later, Prickly says Benedict went on to become Secretary of Education, only to be fired by the President when he tried to abolish recess nationwide.

T.J. and Prickly escape, but they are caught again. T.J. uses his walkie-talkie (in Prickly's desk drawer) and tells his friends Benedict wants to destroy summer vacation after seeing painted graffiti on his wall, indicating so. T.J.'s friends go through the box of documents again. Spinelli finds a date book that says lunar perigee (which happens to be 12:22 the next afternoon) on it; Gretchen deduces that Benedict is trying to move the moon's orbit via tractor beam when it is closest to the Earth, which as a result, will create a new Ice Age. Benedict reveals to T.J. and Prickly that his ultimate plan is to put the world in an eternal state of winter so that kids will be forced inside to study year round.

T.J.'s friends get Becky to drive to the camps again, where they pick up all the children. Gus draws up the plans to attack the school. T.J. and Prickly escape the cage that Benedict has imprisoned them in. Gus' plan works, and most of Benedict's guards and ninjas are knocked out or captured. All the kids pour into the auditorium. Another set of guards protects Benedict as he prepares to pull the lever. However, Muriel P. Finster arrives. After rejecting Benedict again, she brings the teachers in and a fight breaks out. The bald guy tries to punch T.J. in the face for bathing him in corn chowder, but Muriel punches the bald guy in the face. During the fight, Prickly punches Benedict in the face, but as Benedict slumps, he triggers the beam and Prickly cannot reverse it. T.J. tosses his baseball to Vince, whose accurate aim destroys the machine. Benedict and his gang then get captured and arrested by the police for theft and breaking into the school.

T.J.'s friends inform him they intend to spend the rest of their summer with him, and T.J. gives Becky her diary back to thank her. T.J. then rushes into Prickly's office to thank him, only to be thanked back by Prickly for reminding him of why he went into teaching in the first place: to help kids. T.J. runs off with his friends, while Prickly puts on his peace symbol necklace from 1968, and tells T.J. he did not forget about the "saggy butt comment" he had made during a prank early in the film. But T.J. tells him September is a long way off and he runs off to spend the rest of the summer with the rest of the gang.