Amazon.com video review:
Reviled by critics and embraced by the public during its
initial run (1981), Porky's is interesting to watch after all
these years. What holds up about this horny coming-of-age tale is
remarkable. Writer/director Bob Clark has little more than sex and
practical joking on his mind, and his high school seniors from Angel
Beach, Florida, rapidly move from one to the other. Clark displays a
sense of timing and, perhaps rarer still, a sense of male
friendship--its brutalities and its bonds--that feels right, not
artificial. Surprisingly, the showcase practical jokes are still
funny: the Everglades encounter with Cherry Forever, the hole in the
girls' shower, and Beulah Balbricker, the humongous gym teacher. The
comedic set-ups and payoffs surprisingly still work. Clark's
insistence on a subplot about anti-Semitism, however, still sticks out
as A MESSAGE. Kim Cattrall really got her start here (although almost
no one else did) as Ms. Honeywell, a.k.a. "Lassie." Clark later
distanced himself from the irritating Porky's sequels and went
on to make the wonderful Christmas Story,
the tale of a little boy who wants a BB gun for Christmas. --Keith
Simanton
