Synopsis
Sixteen-year-old Michael Dunn arrives at St. Basil's Catholic Boys School in Brooklyn circa 1965. There, he befriends all of the misfits in his class as they collide with the repressive faculty and discover the opposite sex as they come of age.
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Cast
- Donald SutherlandBrother Thadeus
- John HeardBrother Timothy
- Andrew McCarthyMichael Dunn
- Mary Stuart MastersonDanni
- Kevin DillonRooney
- Malcolm DanareCaesar
- Jennifer DundasBoo
- Kate ReidGrandma
- Wallace ShawnFather Abruzzi
- Jay PattersonBrother Constance
Recommandations
- 80
The New York Times
The director Michael Dinner, making his feature debut, and the screenwriter Charles Purpura have an unusually good feeling for the time, the place, the characters as kids and the adults they later turned into. - 80
Time Out
A sharply observed rites-of-passage comedy set in Brooklyn in 1965. - 80
Chicago Reader
A pleasant surprise, Michael Dinner's film manages a mild redemption of the conventions of the horny teenager movie by taking its characters with a grain of seriousness and injecting some light romance and melodrama. - 80
Washington Post
This ensemble comedy, with its fine cast and clever writing, has more mass appeal than the conventional coming-of-age caper. The plot, though scattered, is tried and runs true. [8 Feb 1985, p.23] - 75
TV Guide Magazine
This wonderfully touching and funny reminiscence of life in a Catholic boys high school in Brooklyn circa 1965 went mostly unnoticed by critics and moviegoers alike. HEAVEN HELP US is a refreshingly honest portrayal of teenagers. No character is stereotyped, and events turn out differently than expected. - 70
Variety
Very funny in spots and wonderfully evocative of Brooklyn, circa 1965, pic suffers somewhat by dividing its attention between outrageous pranks and realistic sketches of the Catholic school experience. - 70
Los Angeles Times
It's an unambitious, derivative but engaging little comedy...It's hardly original. It's hardly deep. But, in contrast with much of its genre ("Porky's" and its progeny), it's a model of sophistication, decorum and even taste. It has crass moments and cheap shots, but it's still good: cleverly thought out and gracefully filmed by first-time film director Michael Dinner, who directed the PBS "Miss Lonelyhearts." - 63
Chicago Sun-Times
Heaven Help Us has assembled a lot of the right elements for a movie about a Catholic boys' high school - the locations, the actors, and a lot of the right memories. But it has not found its tone. Maybe the filmmakers just never did really decide what they thought about the subject. For their penance, they should see "Rock and Roll High School."
