This movie essentially begins with a high school student named "Marvin 'Marv' Grant" (Tom Pittman) having to take care of his alcoholic father known simply as "Mr. Grant" (Malcolm Atterbury) because he cannot hold a steady job. As a result, he barely makes ends meet by working the nightshift at a warehouse operated by some rather seedy businessmen. To his credit, his manages to keep his grades up and even has hopes of getting a scholarship to a nearby college upon graduation. Recognizing this, the prettiest girl at the high school "Betty Alexander" (Virginia Aldridge) pretends to be attracted to him in order to have him write an important term paper which will allow her to graduate. Needless to say, her current boyfriend "Vince Rumbo" (Howard Veit) doesn't particular like it when he sees the two of them together, but he calms down when she explains what is really going on. Unfortunately, while Betty might be able to fool Marv, her luck runs out when the English teacher easily recognizes the fraud she has committed and flunks her on the spot. Naturally, no longer having any use for him, Betty immediately breaks things off with Marv and goes back to Vince. For his part, Marv misreads the situation and thinks that he can make things up to her if he suddenly acquires a lot of money. To that effect, after he overhears his boss talking about putting $1 million in the office safe, he comes up with a plan to steal it that very night. What he doesn't count on, however, is Betty telling Vince about his plans. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was a very basic, low budget, grade-B movie which suffered from a weak script and somewhat moralistic overtones. Admittedly, I liked the performance of Virginia Aldridge who seemed quite convincing in her role. Even so, the scenes didn't seem to mesh together very well which gave the film a rather choppy feel to it. Likewise, the rather abrupt ending didn't help either. Be that as it may, while I don't consider this to be a bad movie necessarily, the flaws just mentioned were much too apparent and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.
Review of High School Big Shot
