YMMV / Heaven Help Us

• Awesome Moments:
  • Unwilling to let Brother Constance punish Caesar, who's begging for help, Michael turns and pushes Constance down and then, realizing the line he's crossed, runs out of the school gym with Constance in hot pursuit. Michael stumbles into the school assembly where the Brothers are lecturing the other students against vandalism, and in full view of everyone gets assaulted by Constance, exposing the sadist teacher for who he is. When Michael finally gives Constance a knockout punch, every student at the assembly stands and cheers.
  • Brother Thadeus at the end doling out punishments to Michael, Rooney, and the rest of their gang with two weeks suspension instead of expulsion. And then he punishes Brother Constance for his sadism, by removing him from the Catholic school with instructions he be sent somewhere he won't be a threat to children.
• Funny Moments:
  • Caesar has a note from his mother to excuse him from any serious exertion at school, and he tries to use that note to get out of punishment at the hands of Brother Constance. Constance immediately dismisses the "infamous note," pointing out how Caesar's gotten it laminated.
  • The movie opens with a morning prayer service at the school, with a younger student having gotten hold of a clicker device the Brothers use to signal when everyone should rise and sit. The student proceeds to click it every so often to throw off the service, finally getting to where he clicks it every second to force everyone up and down before a Brother finds him and drags him off for punishment. Roger Ebert in his review pointed to the scene as the most memorable bit in the whole movie.
  • The teen boys, caught once too often playing pranks in school, are forced to cleaning detail to wipe down the statue of St. Basil, which is the constant target of bird poop. In response to the Brothers' shutting down the malt shop that was the teen hangout, and avenging Michael's girlfriend, Rooney and the others cut off the statue's head and give it Michael as a gift. While it gets them all in big trouble with Constance, just the one-second shot of an upset priest staring at the headless statue is hilarious.
    • And the prank seems to wake up Brother Thadeus to siding with the boys who cut off the statue's head, muttering to himself "I always hated that statue," implying he was a student himself there and had to perform the same task as punishment.
  • The school dance between the boys' school and the separate girls' school starts off a bit awkwardly when one of the Brothers (played by Wallace Shawn!) gives an opening speech about the dangers of teenage lust:
  "That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Lust is the beast within you, the beast that wants to consume you, and then SPIT YOU OUT INTO THE ETERNAL FIRES OF HELL. Where, for all eternity, YOUR FLESH WILL BE RIPPED FROM YOUR BODY by GROTESQUE SERPENTS WITH RAZOR SHARP TEETH, where for all eternity, YOUR BLOOD WILL BOIL, YOUR BONES WILL BURN, and YOUR MARROW WILL BE REDUCES TO A PUTRID BLACK SLIME! And for what? For a few moments of weakness, that led you to admire the shape of somebody's buttocks! (pause) Any questions?"
  • During the dance, the brothers are patrolling the room keeping the couples at an appropriate distance apart. After a couple are briefly separated for dancing too closely, the moment the brother leaves the (much taller) girl just pulls the boy headfirst between her cleavage and continue dancing.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The way Michael treats his little sister, who's having a hard time coping with the deaths of their parents.
• Values Dissonance: Rooney is foul-mouthed and says slurs that would have been common at the time, but he does use the gay slur to an uncomfortable degree. Also, he tries to get his crush Janine drunk during their date so she'll be open to his advances. Fortunately an incident of Date Rape is prevented when Janine vomits on Rooney and they are called back to the car.
  • Williams is openly known as a chronic masturbator, admitting while in line for confessional that he's masturbated over 168 times since his last confession a month ago. Something like this would be a serious problem in need of psychological help, but his friends think it's funny.