Teenage sisters Daphne (Tricia Leigh Fisher) and Jennifer (Lisa Lorient) could not be more different, with Jennifer the prim and proper one and Daphne her counterpart, the wild child. Because she keeps getting into trouble their parents decide the only option left open to them is to send them to a private school in Greece where it is hoped they will both settle in, but Daphne is still suffering from her rebellious streak. When they reach the school they both find themselves in separate cliques, with Jennifer in the aspiring "Preens" and Daphne in socially outcast "Subs", but the establishment has a secret...
One of approximately fifteen billion teen comedies released in the nineteen-eighties, Pretty Smart had little to distinguish it from its peers, but you can bet there are people out there who have seen this, ooh, fifteen billion times at some point, such is the nature of these films - they had a guaranteed audience from somewhere. Scripted by Dan Hoskins, this one didn't seem to be able to make up its mind whether it was supposed to be aimed at the girls or the boys. Perhaps it was aiming for that all important middle ground.
The main theme of the film is about putting aside your differences and working together, so with that in mind the obstacle of the pupils being split into various camps would appear to be a problem. In fact, it's only the Americans who end up united a the end, as the other nationalities are purely present to be the vicitms of send-ups, with all the Swedish girls named Inga for example (and as one of the characters observes, it's not often you hear a Swedish joke). So what will bring the Preens and the Subs together? Could it be a shared enemy?
And although the Preens are loyal to him for most of the story, that enemy as Daphne notices right away is the administrator, Mr Crawley (Dennis Cole). He has a divide and conquer approach to the pupils, so he's quite happy that they are all broken up into factions, the Preens being the baddies and the Subs the goodies, for our purposes. It should also be made clear that the Preens are happiest to take their clothes off, which prompts one to wonder how many female empowerment comedies really need to pander to the males in the audience in such a way.
Maybe the filmmakers felt that seeing as how most of the other films in this genre included nudity, then they'd include it too. There is a reason for it, and that's because creepy Mr Crawley is surreptiously filming his students with hidden cameras, even in the shower. This is the school's secret, and to make matters worse he is selling these videos on to the highest bidder, and as if that weren't bad enough he uses the girls as unwitting drug smugglers into the bargain. Therefore it's up to the Subs to turn the tables on him, which leads to the only really funny bit in the whole film. Pretty Smart isn't completely anti-authoritarian because there's a nice teacher who takes Daphne and her friends out for a trip when they've been denied the chance to go to Paris, so it's not really as subversive as it might hope to appear; actually, it's almost wholesome. Music by Eddie Arkin and Jay Levy.
