The Show-Off (1954) Poster

(1954)

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4/10
Not The George Kelly Play
boblipton31 January 2024
Class clown Jim and his friends are always up to some stunt or other. It's all meant in good fun, but sometimes a lady's prized antique crystal gets smashed, or members of the community complain about the sins hung from the school's windows. No one thinks about the good that the Junior class does, the plays they put on. They just know that there are mean-spirited, thoughtless pranksters in their midst.

It's another of the hundreds of short educational feature produced by Centron and directed by Herk Harvey. Like many of them, it ends with some one breaking the fourth wall and asking the audience what they would do.
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From the Director of Carnival of Souls....
Michael_Elliott3 January 2012
Show-Off, The (1954)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent, if annoying, educational film about Jim, a junior class clown who is constantly trying to make a joke out of everything. At first his classmates find him funny but soon he starts to make the entire school look bad and those same classmates must try and find a way to make him quit. The main draw of this film is that it was directed by Herk Harvey who would go onto make the cult classic CARNIVAL OF SOULS. Fans of that film will also notice Frances Feist in the lead here as she too would go onto appear in the cult film in a supporting bit. If you're familiar with these type of educational films then you know they're either straight and dull or campy and over-the-top. This one here certainly falls into the straight aspect but I think it does a little bit more to stay away from the dull side. There are some pretty good technical things including the editing and I must say that the direction wasn't too bad. The biggest problem with the film is the character Jim who is so annoying that you'll never be laughing at anything he does and instead you're going to be wishing that someone would just punch him in the jaw. Another weird thing about this film is the way it shows a classmate as well as a teacher telling the story of Jim and to say the ending really doesn't accomplish anything would be an understatement.
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