Cheats(2002)

Submitted by Tornado Dragon

When Mrs. Herman’s (Barbara Tyson) exam comes up, Sammy (Elden Henson) is not keen on joining Handsome (Trevor Fehrman), Victor (Matthew Lawrence), or Applebee (Martin Starr) in cheating on it, both because he wants to take it honestly and because he has already received a red letter on his permanent record (as has Victor), which threatens his chances of getting accepted into a college. Handsome, Victor, and Applebee soon agree to not cheat, either, but when Victor tries to make friends with the best female note-takers in Mrs. Herman’s class so they can get their notes and increase their chances of passing the exam, Julie (Maggie Lawson) – an overzealous student who knows that Victor and his friends are cheaters and blames them for her getting waitlisted by Tufts University, her dream college – has a chat with all of the girls (as well as the male note-taker Shapiro [Jared Van Snellenberg]) and makes them all vow to not share their notes with Victor or the others. When Sammy reports this bad news to his friends while they are all at his house, Handsome decides that they will have to cheat again using crib notes provided by Applebee, then comes up with a plan that first sees Victor calling Mrs. Herman’s house and getting one of her two adopted sons on the line. Handsome has Victor offer the boy a cash bribe of $47 in exchange for a copy of the exam, but the kid tells him that he wants $400 for it (causing Victor to dub him “Greedy” [Dixon Cohee]). Victor agrees to the deal and hangs up. When Handsome tries to execute the next stage of the plan, Sammy tells him and the others to go do it somewhere else, so they leave.

Handsome brings Victor and Applebee over to his house, and then they call up three other guys who have benefitted from some of their previous cheating schemes and invite them over so they can be a part of this one. However, after getting everyone to contribute money towards Greedy’s payoff, Victor comes to think that too many people are involved in this scheme for it to work, and he voices his concerns to Handsome and Applebee, but he is ignored. Victor then calls up Greedy again and tells him that he has his money, but Greedy informs him that they have a problem: His brother – who is later nicknamed “Horny” (Lachlan Murdoch) – caught him stealing the test from their mother’s bedroom, so he had to tell him all about the deal they made. He then says that Horny wants to be paid as well, but not with money. Victor ends the call so he can discuss the matter with Handsome and figure out what to do next, and Handsome soon tells Victor to call up the kids again, believing that everyone has their price. After Horny refuses all forms of monetary payment offered to him, Victor hangs up again, and he tells Handsome that they are screwed. Handsome asks him who the hottest girl was at the gymnastics camp he worked at in the past, which is where he first met the two boys, and after Victor replies that it was Allison Westbrook, Handsome tells him to tell Horny that they will arrange a romantic date between him and Allison in exchange for the exam (which is all a lie; neither Handsome nor Victor knew Allison personally or had her contact information). Victor runs this proposal by Horny when he calls him again, and Horny accepts it. Victor drives over to the boys’ house and picks up the test, but then he finds out that Greedy was let in on Horny’s arrangement and now wants the same thing, so Victor changes the deal to include Greedy in the date.

On the drive back to Handsome’s house, Victor calls Handsome and first tells him to tell the others that he didn’t get the test, then tells him that he actually did get it before explaining what went down between him, Horny, and Greedy. He then tells Handsome to send Applebee and the others home so they alone can look up the answers together, still thinking that, with six people involved in this scheme, someone is bound to screw it up. However, when Victor returns, he notices that everyone is still there, and Handsome meets him outside and explains that he couldn’t screw everybody over like that. Shortly after Applebee starts to write crib notes for everyone, Handsome decides that it is indeed too risky to crib with this many people, so he tells the others that they are going to memorize the exam answers through a song instead. Victor and Applebee get confrontational with each other over this idea when Applebee says that he doesn’t want to sing, and Victor – who has been growing increasingly irritated with Applebee and his meek nature – soon slaps him and challenges him to hit him back. When Handsome tells Applebee that he must do it, Applebee asks him if he read his file in Dr. Newman’s (Andrew Johnston) office (back when he raided it earlier in the film as part of a past job) and read the information concerning his penis, but Handsome just tells him again to hit Victor and promises that he will let no harm come to him. Applebee slaps Victor and shuffles away, and Victor and Handsome give each other a shove afterward.

The next morning, Handsome telephones Sammy and sings him most of the “answer song,” not wanting to exclude him from this scheme, but Sammy doesn’t want to hear it and hangs up halfway through it. After Handsome and company complete the exam, Mrs. Herman informs Sammy and Victor that Principal Stark (Mary Tyler Moore) wants to see them in her office. When they get there, she tells them that she is rescinding their red letters because they have both displayed a positive turnaround in behavior (especially Sammy, since he started up a student court for students accused of troublemaking). That night, Horny and Greedy call up Victor and warn him that he had better honor his end of their deal, but their threat loses steam when they realize they have nothing to threaten him with. Meanwhile, Sammy starts getting closer to Julie after studying with her multiple times, and he also gets admitted into a college.

The next time the guys attend Mrs. Herman’s class, she steps out to make a personal call and leaves her treasured grade book behind. Having never liked her because of her excessively stern nature and how she hands out F grades to students for the most minor transgressions, Handsome gets a hold of the book and tells the class that he is going to wipe out all the F grades from it. However, Victor decides to take it one step further by standing up and declaring that it would be better for them to just destroy the whole book. Though Sammy tries to advise his friends not to go through with this idea, Handsome and Victor take the book and later burn it, plus they urinate on it for good measure. At her next class, the furious Mrs. Herman warns the students that if she does not get her grade book back by tomorrow morning, she will have the senior trip canceled, and both Handsome and Victor realize that it is only a matter of time before somebody talks because the students all wanted that trip.

Later on, Sammy gets called into Principal Stark’s office, and he finds out from her that she has received an anonymous letter from someone explaining that they and the rest of Mrs. Herman’s students saw Victor take the grade book. She then tells him that she summoned him here because she wants the student court to take care of this, and she wants it resolved by graduation day. Sammy meets up with his friends and tells them all about his meeting with Stark, and Victor almost gets aggressive with Applebee, thinking that he lost his nerve and penned the letter. Sammy gets in between them and asks Applebee if he wrote it, but he doesn’t confirm nor deny this and runs off. Sammy informs Handsome and Victor that the letter doesn’t really mean anything on its own, but he has to interview everyone that was attending the class that day, and if just one person says that they saw Victor take the book, he’s finished. Handsome decides to take it upon himself to ensure that no one testifies, and when Sammy asks what they are going to do about Applebee, Victor replies that he will deal with him by kicking his butt. Handsome and Sammy order him to stay cool, stay quiet, and keep his hands to himself.

Thanks to Handsome’s manipulations, none of the students confess to Sammy that Victor took the grade book. However, Victor’s temper gets the best of him, and he starts to leave some threatening messages to Applebee, still thinking that he sent that letter to Stark. This ultimately causes Applebee to confess to the student court that he saw Victor take the book. Sammy later talks to Victor and warns him that he will be expelled if the jury finds him guilty (which they will), but he has the authority to offer him a deal: If he gives a full confession, he will get an F in Mrs. Herman’s class, but it won’t go on his final transcript and he will get to walk the stage at graduation. However, he will have to make up for the class in summer school and pass it in order to get his diploma. Victor accepts the deal, and he rats out Handsome in the process, which results in Handsome receiving the same punishment. On graduation day at the school, Victor is getting ready for the ceremony in one of the school’s bathrooms when Horny and Greedy suddenly confront him and tell him that they are giving him one last chance to live up to his end of their deal. However, Victor just smiles and tells them that that is never going to happen. Horny and Greedy then remind him that, although he could ruin their fantasies, beat them up, and remind them that they aren’t biological brothers (since he considers adoption to be an unnatural act), they aren’t rats like he is, and now everyone knows that he is one.

At the ceremony, none of the four friends are speaking to each other. As the physics teacher, Mr. Harkin (Morris Panych), is handing out the math and science awards, Handsome tells Applebee that he did look at his file earlier and was sorry for doing so. Just then, Handsome is announced as the school’s Outstanding Achievement in Physics Award winner, much to everyone’s shock. As Handsome goes up to accept the award, he narrates that, although he did things like steal the midterm, flirt with Mr. Harkin (which he did as part of another past scheme), lie to Mrs. Herman’s sons, look at Applebee’s file and read about his crooked penis, urinate on the grade book, and anger all his friends, he found that when he and his friends were cheating together, it was the sweetest thing he ever knew. He remarks that Stark did everything she could to ruin graduation for them, but it ended up being one of their greatest victories, and he considers the award he received to be for all of them. He is last shown sharing a smile with his friends while standing at the podium.

The film’s epilogue states the following:

• Although Horny and Greedy never got their dream date, they did get revenge on the guys because THEY were the ones who wrote the anonymous letter to Principal Stark.
• After graduation, Victor found out that he was adopted. He now hates himself.
• Handsome never told anyone about Applebee’s crooked penis – until just now.
• Sammy started having sex with Julie – but Julie woke up and stopped him.
• Victor and Handsome did one last job together in summer school, which was taught by Mr. Harkin. Handsome wore a tank top, Victor wore hot pants, and Mr. Harkin gave them both an A.