School Ties (1992)

February 5, 2023 3:48 PM

Lines are draw at a New England prep school when a new student's secret is revealed.

Starring Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, and Amy Locane
Also starring Chris O'Donnell, Andrew Lowery, Randall Batinkoff, Cole Hauser, Anthony Rapp, and Ben Affleck
Directed by Robert Mandel

School Ties
60% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes
JustWatch listing

posted by Stuka (7 comments total)

I really REALLY wanted to see this at the time it came out, but I was just out of college and broke and overwhelmed. I need to see it now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:52 AM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I saw it when it came out, thought Brendan Fraser was fantastic. I had no idea that so many now-famous people were in it. I think I'd like to rewatch.
posted by creepygirl at 11:11 AM on February 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I rewatched School Ties the other night. This is not a bad movie at all. It doesn't have the starpower or the iconic moments that Dead Poets Society has. But the story is good and the acting is solid. Plus, I enjoyed seeing Brendan, Matt, Chris, Ben, all of those guys together. I imagine this was a fun movie to make.
posted by Stuka at 11:38 AM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I saw this so many times when it came out - not sure why, if it was shown in class for some reason, or it was on at someone's house, but whole scenes are engraved in my mind, as are things like Amy Locane telling an interviewer that Brendan Fraser gave her a prop she wanted from the set, as well as Fraser discussing it in an awesome interview he gave for Movieline magazine that I had damn near memorised (as I had many issues of Movieline damn near memorised; ahh, misspent pre-internet youth). So I can't be remotely objective about it - even watching it, I knew it was part of a post-Dead Poets wave of Rotten in Prep School with Hunks™ media (same year as Scent of a Woman!). But the casting is so good, and it's so embedded in my psyche.

I see the director has made some other interesting b-movies, like F/X and The Substitute.
posted by Gin and Broadband at 11:23 PM on February 6, 2023

Um sorry for double post but holy shit, this is based on Dick "Da-dum" Wolf's own life story?!
posted by Gin and Broadband at 11:25 PM on February 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was 15 when this came out, and in exactly the right headspace to be very interested in Prep School Hunks, and I loved this movie and watched it endlessly in the 1990s.
I absolutely associate this movie with most of these actors, including Brendan Fraser and Matt Damon. I know Anthony Rapp has had a long and storied career, and most people associate him with Rent, but I always remember him first as the McGoo asshole with the coke-bottle glasses.

The musical score is what comes back to me right now.

I see that Dick Wolf wrote this, but where did you see that it was autobiographical?
posted by aabbbiee at 12:44 PM on February 8, 2023

Finally saw it. The performances were of course excellent; the storyline and plot a little...predictable. The cast does great still.

Just found this oral history of the film from 2017. Brendan Fraser has a footnote in it; he said that in later years he met a rabbi who did outreach with Israeli and Palestinian kids, and she used this film to break the ice when new groups were meeting for the first time, and he sounds especially chuffed at that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:20 PM on February 14, 2023