Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Making the Grade Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov January 14, 2017

Dorian Walker's "Making the Grade" (1984) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent distributors Olive Films. There are no supplemental features on the release. In English, without optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

What a terrific idea...

It seems like the perfect deal for both of them. Eddie Keaton (Judd Nelson) desperately needs a little over three grand to pay a gambling debt and Palmer Woodrow (Dana Olson) is willing to write a check for ten grand if he agrees to go to prep school for him while he spends a year in Europe partying as hard as he can. So they arrange the details and quickly head in opposite directions.

At the prestigious Hoover Academy, Palmer’s best pal becomes Eddie’s mentor and teaches him how to behave like a spoiled brat. It turns out to be a pretty easy role to play until Eddie bumps into the beautiful Tracy Hoover (Jonna Lee) and very quickly falls madly in love with her. While he tries to earn her heart, Eddie struggles to be the wild and crazy loon that he was hired to be and eventually Tracy realizes that there is a side of him that she can also like and love. But she can’t quite figure out what triggers Eddie’s extreme character transformations and the more she struggles to rationalize them, the more frustrated she becomes.

Meanwhile, the slightly nutty knuckle-dragger Dice (Andrew Dice Clay) tracks down Eddie and arrives at Hoover Academy determined to finally collect what he owes him. And with the interest, Dice insists that Eddie just ought to pay him what Palmer has promised him. Dice is temporarily distracted by the fun activities on campus, which give Eddie some extra time to improvise, but when Palmer also unexpectedly returns to check on his investment all hell breaks loose.

The script for this '80s teen comedy came from Gene Quintano who also scribbled the scripts for a few of the Police Academy films, so this should give you a pretty good idea what type of material director Dorian Walker had to work with. Quintano was also one of the film’s producers, together with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, so it is probably safe to assume that the end product is essentially the type of film that he had in mind.

The film is rather entertaining, though the bulk of Eddie’s adventures on campus are easily forgettable. After Dice appears the energy level moves up a notch and it seems like the quality of the dialog also improves, but then Eddie becomes very serious about proving to Tracy that they were meant to be together and Dice is promptly booted out. So while it opens up and for a while it very much functions as a teen comedy, the film gradually becomes a lot more interested in romance and wraps up its story with a different identity. It works, but there are plenty of other similarly themed films that are a lot more entertaining (see Can't Buy Me Love and Say Anything...).

Nelson is likeable but Lee is miscast and there are numerous sequences where it is quite easy to tell that the two are not very comfortable with each other. This is disappointing because they actually look great together.

Cannon Films were apparently ready to shoot a sequel because during the end credits the following message pops up: “Palmer and Eddie will be back in Tourista”. But the film received some pretty disappointing reviews and the planned sequel never materialized.

Making the Grade Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Dorian Walker's Making the Grade arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films.

It is rather easy to see that the master that was used to produce the release was prepared some time ago, though I think that it is actually a fairly decent one. Indeed, while there is certainly room for improvement there are large portions of the film where depth and detail range from average to good. Unfortunately, the encoding is somewhat inconsistent and in places where the transfer conveys some native issues there are minor anomalies that further exacerbate their effects. Grain exposure, in particular, could have been more convincing and a lot of the light noise that pops up in some areas could have been either minimized or completely avoided. Definition can appear compromised for similar reasons. Colors are stable, but ideally saturation and nuances should be better. There are no traces of problematic sharpening adjustments. Overall image stability is very good. (Note: This is a Region-A 'locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Making the Grade Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are not provided for the main feature.

Clarity is very good but it feels like depth is lacking at times. I also suspect that if the audio is fully remastered overall balance will be improved. Occasionally some of the exchanges during the group footage also sounds a bit thin, though there is plenty of noise that contributes to these fluctuations. There are no audio dropouts or distortions to report.

Making the Grade Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Most unfortunately, there are no supplemental features to be found on this release.

Making the Grade Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are a lot of other '80s teen comedies that do all of the things that Making the Grade does a lot better. Can't Buy Me Love and Say Anything... immediately come to mind, and there are quite a few more. I did not dislike the film, but it failed to engage me and at the end I did not really care much about its characters. The technical presentation is decent, but the larger your screen is, the easier it will be for you to spot the limitations of the master that was used to produce the Blu-ray release. RENT IT.