Plot
It is the last day of school before summer vacation. The gym teacher, Mr. Freddy Shoop (Mark Harmon), couldn't care less about his job and is ready to vacation in Hawaii with his young girlfriend, Kim.
The Vice Principal, Phil Gills (Robin Thomas), calls a number of students to the office. They include easily distracted Pam (Courtney Thorne-Smith); "nocturnal" Larry, who happens to be a male stripper (Ken Olandt); football jock Kevin (Patrick Labyorteaux); pregnant Rhonda (Shawnee Smith); geeky Alan (Richard Steven Horvitz), whose siblings are all straight-A students ("There must have been a baby mix-up at the hospital"); dyslexic Denise (Kelly Jo Minter) and two horror-film-obsessed underachievers, Dave (Gary Riley) and Francis, a.k.a. 'Chainsaw' (Dean Cameron). They all failed and have to go to summer school for remedial English.
The original remedial English teacher (Carl Reiner) wins the lottery and immediately quits work. Gills has no choice but to give the job to Shoop. Gills implies that not taking the job could keep him from getting tenure.
On the first day, Shoop meets Robin Bishop (Kirstie Alley), who is teaching next door. Shoop falls head over heels for her, but she is already dating Gills. Shoop's first day is a disaster. Most of the students ditch and one, Jerome (Duane Davis), goes to the lavatory and doesn't return.
Gills brings in a beautiful Italian transfer student, Anna-Maria (Fabiana Udenio), who will be learning English as well, much to the delight of Dave and Chainsaw. After the leftover students attempt to ditch as well, Shoop admits he has no idea how to teach. They spend their first few days having fun and going to the beach, a theme park and the petting zoo until Gills finds out.
Gills threatens to fire Shoop unless his students pass the end-of-term test. Shoop promises each kid a favor if they study. The kids agree, so Shoop gives Denise driving lessons, accompanies Rhonda to Lamaze classes, gives Kevin football lessons, allows Dave to throw a party in his house (destroying his couch in the process), gives Larry a bed in the classroom, lets Chainsaw arrange a screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in his class and allows Pam to move in with him.
He has no idea how to teach. Robin tells him to make teaching fun. Shoop begins to grow closer to his kids. They study hard to write their English basic skills exam, still worried that Gills is going to fire Shoop unless all his students pass.
Shoop is sent to jail when he covers for Chainsaw and Dave after they are found in possession of alcohol. Robin and Gills bail him out. Gills then inadvertently exposes his true self to Robin when he states that he cares nothing for Shoop or his students and she overhears him. She storms off angrily.
Larry is fired from his stripper job when he is found out first by his aunt (who kisses him...with tongue) and then by his mother (after she puts five dollars in his g-string). The students make more demands on Shoop and he quits his job in anger. He is then convinced to come back when his students start feeling guilty about what they did and they scare off Shoop's replacement with a series of stunts eerily reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Shoop and his students then begin preparing for the test in earnest. The student who "went to the lavatory" finally returns, with his only explanation being, "My zipper got stuck." He ends up getting the highest score in the class with a 91.
The exam goes smoothly despite Rhonda going into labor near the end (at least now she has grounds for a makeup). Not all pass, so Gills is ready to follow through with his firing threat. However, the parents of the students come to Shoop's defense. Because of the students' great improvement, Principal Kelban (Francis X. McCarthy) grants Shoop tenure for his positive effect. Shoop and Robin end up happily together; a la From Here to Eternity, they kiss in the surf.
Read more about this topic: Summer School (film)
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“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
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