Recess: School's Out

A group of men break into a military base and steal a top-secret project, intending to use Third Street School as their headquarters. After pranking on Principal Prickly on the last day of school before summer vacation, T.J. Detweiler is excited to spend the time off with his friends, only to be disappointed to learn they will all be attending different summer camps. Resigned to spending the summer alone, T.J. notices strange activity at Third Street School. Investigating further, he sees scientists performing strange experiments with a tractor beam. After neither his parents nor the police believe him, he goes to Prickly, who prepares to show T.J. the school is empty, but is dematerialized when trying to enter the building.

Desperate, T.J. blackmails his older sister Becky to drive him to all the camps to retrieve his friends. They all return with him to Third Street School, but accuse him of deceit after recovering a box of inconsequential documents from the school. T.J.'s suspicions are verified when they all see a giant laser emerging from the school roof and formulate a plan of camp during the day and meeting up at night. After T.J. finds Prickly's discarded pants with a note reading "Help Me!" in the pocket, the gang infiltrate the school to rescue him. Randall Weems, who has been eavesdropping on them, goes to inform deputy principal Muriel Finster.

The kids find the auditorium has been turned into a laboratory. T.J. is captured by guards while his friends escape, and he is imprisoned with Prickly. They both discover that Prickly's old friend Dr. Phillium Benedict is overseeing the operation inside the school. Prickly explains that in 1968, while he, Benedict and Finster were all in teacher training, Benedict was appointed Principal of Third Street School and proposed abolishing recess to improve test grades. Concerned for the children, Prickly went to the superintendent, who promptly fired Benedict and replaced him as principal with Prickly, which also led to Finster, his girlfriend at the time, breaking up with him. Swearing revenge on Prickly for costing him his job and his girlfriend, Benedict became a politician and worked his way into becoming Secretary of Education, but was fired by the President for attempting to abolish recess nationwide.

While T.J.'s friends review the recovered papers, Spinelli finds a date book that mentions lunar perigee. Gretchen realizes the machine they saw is a tractor beam and concludes that Benedict intends to use it to move the moon when it nears Earth. T.J. and Prickly get to Prickly's office, where they discover Benedict's plan to eradicate summer vacation by creating a new permanent ice age that will force kids indoors year-round. Meanwhile, T.J.'s friends persuade Becky to drive them to the camps and gather all the other students, while Finster rallies the teachers, and Gus concocts a plan to infiltrate the school.

As Benedict prepares to enact his plan in the auditorium, the students and teachers of Third Street School all arrive and battle his henchmen. During the ensuing fight, Benedict attempts to activate the beam himself but is stopped by Prickly, only for Benedict to break the controls and make the process irreversible. T.J. instructs Vince to throw a baseball at the beam, which destroys it. Finally aware of Benedict's plot, the police arrive at the school to arrest him and his henchmen. T.J.'s friends decide to spend the rest of their summer together. T.J. thanks Prickly in his office, who in turn thanks T.J. for reminding him why he started teaching: to help kids. T.J. then joins his friends as Prickly jokingly reminds T.J. he will still be reprimanded for his earlier prank when September comes.

Recess: School's Out was released on VHS and DVD by Walt Disney Home Video on August 7, 2001.^[4] As of November 12, 2019, the film, along with the series, is available to stream on Disney+.

The film earned $36.7 million in North America and another $7.8 million from other countries. The worldwide gross was $44.5 million, against a $23 million budget.^[2] The film was released in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2001, and opened on #7.^[5]

On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, the film has an approval rating of 60% based on 70 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though basically a television cartoon stretched out to movie length, Recess has enough successful jokes and smart writing to make it a worthwhile view."^[4] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 43 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[6] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film a two and a half stars out of four, saying, "Parents may find it amusing, but it doesn't have the two track versatility of Rugrats in Paris, which worked for kids on one level, and adults on another."^[7] Bob McCabe of Empire, gave the film a one out of five stars and said, "Even if it did keep the ankle biters quiet for an hour or so, this still wouldn't be worth your money."^[8]

Common Sense Media gave the film two out of five stars and said: "Simply a TV episode blown up for the big screen."^[9]

 

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