Delayed Reaction: My Old School

Premise: A documentary about an infamous deception in Scotland in the 90s.

 

I can’t say I was tracking the Scottish tabloids much in the 1990s, so I wasn’t familiar with the story of this movie. It’s not that hidden from the beginning, so I don’t mind spilling the beans now. A 30-year-old man re-enrolled in his high school pretending to be a 5^th year student from Canada. That’s objectively wild. It worked for an entire year! Teachers that had him a decade before didn’t recognize him. His older appearance and uncommon intelligence didn’t give him away. I get why, on paper, this looks like a great idea for a documentary. However, I think this is a wilder 2 paragraphs than 90 minutes.

 

For me, My Old School suffers from the fact that I’ve already seen a very similar documentary that I like a lot more. The 2012 documentary The Imposter is the same as My Old School in a lot of ways but it’s even crazier. And the implications are much more nefarious. By comparison, My Old School is pretty tame.

 

There are aspects of My Old School I like a lot. The man who conned everyone, Brandon Lee, is mimed excellently by Alan Cumming. By that, I mean Brandon Lee is interviewed and recorded but isn’t on screen. Cumming mimes Lee’s interviews and does it so well that I forget it’s not him. The filmmaker is actually one of the classmates that Lee deceived, so the level of access is terrific. He gets all sorts of former students and teachers to tell stories. Most interviews are told in pairs, which works really well. Two former students help each other fill in the blanks and remember more. It also plays up how the rumors and tall tales developed. I love the rapport of the interviews.

 

The movie does lose a lot of momentum about midway in. It reveals Brandon’s deception around then, and it struggles to escalate or investigate it further. The “but wait, there’s more” twists like his “Grandmother” still being alive don’t add much. And it’s far too gentle in its interrogation of Brandon. They reveal that it’s all a scheme for him to get into med school. They barely have anything to say about why he failed it the first time. There’s a story there, and it doesn’t feel like they pushed hard enough to get it.

 

In the end, My Old School is much more valuable as a look at what it was like to be in high school in Scotland in the 90s. It works as a filmed high school reunion and a look at the way stories change and evolve over time. The story of Brandon Lee’s con almost gets in the way.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend