All I Wanna Do (1998 film)

All I Wanna Do (originally titled The Hairy Bird) is a 1998 American comedy film written and directed by Sarah Kernochan. It stars Kirsten Dunst, Gaby Hoffmann, Monica Keena, Heather Matarazzo and Rachael Leigh Cook in an ensemble cast as students of the fictional Miss Godard's Preparatory School for Girls, and Lynn Redgrave as the school's headmistress. The film takes place in 1963 and focuses on several students' plotting and sabotage of a proposed merger for the school to go coed.

All I Wanna Do
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySarah Kernochan
Written bySarah Kernochan
Produced byIra Deutchman
Peter Newman
Starring
CinematographyAnthony Janelli
Music byGraeme Revell
Production
company
Redeemable Features
Distributed byAlliance Communications (Canada)
Miramax Films (United States)
Release dates
  • August 21, 1998 (1998-08-21) (Canada)
  • September 4, 1998 (1998-09-04) (United States)
Running time
97 minutes
CountriesCanada
United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$5 million[1]
Box office$907,996[2]

Originally titled The Hairy Bird, the film's screenplay, set in 1963, is based loosely on Kernochan's experiences at Rosemary Hall around that time. Filming was done in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at the Trafalgar Castle School in Whitby. The song "The Hairy Bird" plays during the film's end credits; it was written by Kernochan and sung by a group which includes Kernochan and five of her Rosemary Hall classmates, including Glenn Close.[3]

The film was given a limited release on September 4, 1998, in the United States under the title All I Wanna Do (as its American distributor Miramax Films found the original title too offensive), and was then acquired by Buena Vista Home Entertainment who released it straight-to-video. In Canada and the United Kingdom (as well as for later streaming distribution in the U.S.), it was released under the title Strike!.

Plot

In the winter of 1963 in New England, Odette "Odie" Sinclair is forcibly transferred by her parents to Miss Godard's Preparatory School for Girls after her parents find out that she has planned to have sex with her boyfriend, Dennis. Upon arrival to the school, which is run by the stern but kind headmistress Miss McVane, Odette is introduced to her roommates, the intelligent and charismatic Verena von Stefan and the promiscuous Tinka Parker. Verena and Tinka are the school's primary troublemakers; both mock an uptight hall monitor named Abigail "Abby" Sawyer, who has a penchant for tattletaling, and Verena regularly buys cigarettes from a lunch cook and is constantly late for classes.

After a brief hazing period, Odie is welcomed into the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Ravioli), a club of several girls at the school who have greater aspirations than those of their peers; the members congregate in the school's attic, where they have access to canned ravioli stored above the cafeteria. The club is led by Verena, and consists of several other girls, including Theresa "Tweety" Goldberg, a bulimic who self-induces vomiting by drinking ipecac syrup and plans to be a child psychologist; and Maureen "Momo" Haines, a well-spoken science nerd and aspiring biologist. Verena has plans to start a fashion magazine like Vogue, while Tinka plans to be an "actress-folk singer-slut". Odie declares her interest in politics, but pines to finish what she started with Dennis and lose her virginity.

The D.A.R. begins planning a rendezvous for Odie and Dennis, but when it is discovered that Miss Godard's is considering going co-ed with the nearby St. Ambrose boys' academy, the girls become divided on the matter and ultimately the club breaks up, with Verena and Momo determined to sabotage an upcoming dance with the St. Ambrose boys. Meanwhile, the board of trustees for the school, which include Abby's parents, deliberates on the matter. Miss McVane detests the merger, but can do little about it because of the school's financial problems.

As the St. Ambrose dance arrives, Verena and Momo concoct a plan to cast the boys' academy in a bad light by spiking the fruit punch with alcohol from the chemistry lab and feeding them Tweety's ipecac to induce vomiting during their choir performance; Verena then plants empty liquor bottles in their school bus. The same night, Dennis arrives at the academy dressed in a St. Ambrose uniform and meets Odette for their rendezvous in the attic of the school. Just before they can consummate their relationship, Odette starts to have second thoughts when Dennis casually brushes off her interest in politics. They make up and begin kissing, but are caught by Mr. Dewey, a St. Ambrose teacher who acts lasciviously with students. Dewey throws Dennis out, but before he can make an advance on Odie, a group of teenage male townies called "The Flat Critters"—led by Snake who has a crush on Tinka—crash the scene, steal Dewey's clothes, and lock him in a closet.

Tweety and Tinka have a change of heart on the co-ed integration after Tweety is sexually assaulted and humiliated by some St. Ambrose students. With the help of the Flat Critters, they end up sending the intoxicated St. Ambrose boys home with a poor reputation. Mr. Dewey is also fired from the school. Miss McVane recognizes Verena as the mastermind behind the sabotage. Despite Miss McVane's appreciation for Verena's efforts, she is forced to expel Verena for having been caught fraternizing in her undergarments with a St. Ambrose boy.

The following week at the end of the year ceremony, the announcement of the merger is made by Mrs. Sawyer, much to the disapproval of the girls, including Abby. The students, led by Odie, hole up inside the school dormitories and demand a student body vote be counted as a single vote on the board of trustees. Meanwhile, a media circus surrounds the school, and the board of trustees agree to a student vote. Ultimately, the votes against the integration outnumber those for it, and the students donate their personal savings to help with the school's debt.

In an epilogue prior to the credits, the girls' fates are revealed:

Verena goes on to publish Moi, one of the most-read women's publications in the world;
Odette becomes a congresswoman and declares war on the tobacco industry;
Momo is a scientist developing the first male oral contraceptive;
Tinka, a famous actress, comes out to Barbara Walters in a 1997 interview;
Tweety became a psychologist and wrote a best-seller about bulimia;
Abby, a radical political activist, is serving a prison sentence for a 1970 bank holdup;
and Miss Godard's remains a girls school whose graduates include thousands of corporate and community leaders.

Cast

Production

All I Wanna Do was filmed in 1997 in Whitby and Toronto,[4] primarily at the Trafalgar Castle School also at Loretto Abbey CSS (especially the chapel scenes), and was financed through Canadian distribution company Alliance Communications (renamed around the time of release to Alliance Atlantis, following the completion of Alliance's merger with Atlantis Communications). Nora Ephron served as an executive producer.[5]

Release

Box office

The film was picked up by Miramax Films for $3.5 million[6] and was given a limited release in the United States on September 4, 1998, under the alternate title All I Wanna Do,[7] as Miramax found the film's original working title, The Hairy Bird (which alluded to male genitalia), to be too offensive.[3][8] It opened on 133 screens, grossing a total of $907,996 domestically.[2] The film was released in Canada and the United Kingdom under the title Strike!. (The Canadian-British title became an alternative name for later releases on U.S.-based digital distribution platforms—such as Amazon Prime Video and YouTube—which often list it as "Strike! (aka All I Wanna Do)", though with the U.S. title being used in the opening credits.) Australia was the only country in which Miramax Films released the film under its original title.[9]

In March 2000, the film was re-released in New York City[10][6] at the United Artists Union Square Theater where it grossed $5,383 in its single week of screenings.[11]

In 2019, director Sarah Kernochan said Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein intentionally shelved the film,[6][12] an incident which is detailed in Peter Biskind’s book Down and Dirty Pictures : Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film.[13][14] While Weinstein was initially enthusiastic about the film and told Kernochan it would screen in 2,000 theaters across the U.S.; Miramax ultimately gave the film no publicity, and distributed the film in limited release, mostly in Canada.[6] The film was eventually acquired by Disney and went straight-to-video.[6][15]

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 67% based on 12 reviews.[16] On Metacritic, it has a score of 60% based on reviews from 6 critics.[17] A. O. Scott of The New York Times noted that the film "mixes such prim old-fashioned naughtiness with more consequential misbehavior...  All I Wanna Do lurches between girl-power melodrama and bratty farce, but the ungainliness is part of the film's charm."[7] He also noted that the film is "surprisingly pleasant, thanks to smart, unstereotyped performances – especially by Ms. Hoffmann and Ms. Dunst – and the filmmaker's evident respect and affection for her characters."[7] Writing for the Australian publication The Age, Tom Ryan deemed the film "an appealing slice of nostalgia for a time when the world seemed ready for the taking for those with enough spunk to try."[9]

Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club favorably reviewed the film, noting that in its final act it "gains focus and momentum, becoming less a nostalgic celebration of female bonding than a boldly feminist teen sex comedy that isn't above the occasional group-vomiting scene. It improves steadily as it goes along, right up through an enormously satisfying ending that combines rousing rhetoric about the price of gender inequity and the power of group solidarity—and throws in a rowdy snobs vs. slobs setpiece worthy of Animal House."[18]

References
  1. Kernochan, Sarah (October 9, 2007). "Chix Nix Chix Flix: The Warner Bros Manifesto". HuffPost. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  2. "Strike!". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved September 14, 2019.
  3. Grossman, Pam (May 17, 2000). "Girls' School Rules". Salon. Archived from the original on August 6, 2011. Retrieved August 10, 2011.
  4. Gerstel, Judy (September 12, 1998). "A sweet, jolly rascal of a movie about a girls' finishing school". Harbour City Star. Nanaimo, British Columbia. p. A6 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. "'Bird' in Miramax's hand". Variety. November 4, 1997. Archived from the original on November 24, 2021. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  6. McLaughlin, Kelly (December 17, 2019). "A female director says Harvey Weinstein buried her film debut more than 20 years ago. Now she wonders about other women filmmakers 'whose careers he totally destroyed.'". Insider. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  7. Scott, A.O. (March 24, 2000). "'All I Wanna Do': With Sugar and Spice, and Ravioli Eaten Cold". The New York Times. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
  8. Kernochan, Sarah. "Sarah Kernochan: Feature Films". sarahkernochan.com. Retrieved August 10, 2011.
  9. "The Hairy Bird". The Age. Melbourne, Victoria. December 6, 1998. p. 87 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "The Movie Report Archive, Volume #66". Mr. Brown Movie Archive. March 24, 2000. Archived from the original on November 9, 2000. Retrieved November 24, 2021.
  11. "All I Wanna Do (2000)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 9, 2011.
  12. "82: All I Wanna Do (Strike!) (1998) with the We Really Like Her podcast". The Royal Canadian Movie Podcast. April 10, 2018. Archived from the original on January 8, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  13. Biskind, Peter (2005). Down and Dirty Pictures : Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 352–357. ISBN 978-0-68-486258-3.
  14. "102.5: All I Wanna Do! An interview with Sarah Kernochan". The Royal Canadian Movie Podcast. August 29, 2018. Archived from the original on January 8, 2022. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  15. Kernochan, Sarah [@sarahkernochan] (October 14, 2018). "Thank you!! And the reason it doesn't have more of a following is because Harvey Weinstein bought & then refused to release it in theaters. Disney threw it on video and that was that. It played theaters in other countries" (Tweet). Archived from the original on November 24, 2021. Retrieved November 24, 2021 – via Twitter.
  16. "All I Wanna Do". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on 2004-10-14.
  17. "All I Wanna Do". Metacritic. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  18. Rabin, Nathan (March 29, 2002). "All I Wanna Do". The A.V. Club. Retrieved September 19, 2018.
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