Hair High, we love thy towers
And your ivy-covered walls
Sons of barbers and beauticians
Ever roaming through your halls
Though our shining locks may fall off
And our tresses turn to gray
Hair High, our alma mater
In our hearts you will ever stay
And your ivy-covered walls
Sons of barbers and beauticians
Ever roaming through your halls
Though our shining locks may fall off
And our tresses turn to gray
Hair High, our alma mater
In our hearts you will ever stay
—Hair High's alma mater song
Hair High is a 2004 animated film by Bill Plympton. Genre-wise, it falls somewhere between romantic comedy, and horror, or Horror Romantic Comedy... But one thing that can be agreed on is it's a trip what with this being a Plympton work and all.
Rod and Cherri rule the school as prom king and queen, respectively. New kid Spud accidentally offends both Cherri and Rod, and so is forced to become Cherri's slave. Naturally, they immediately hate each other, but later fall in love. However, Rod is not too pleased with this and, having already warned Spud beforehand, this could mean trouble.
It features a huge ensemble voice cast including, but not limited to, Sarah Silverman, Dermot Mulroney, David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Ed Begley Jr., Matt Groening, Justin Long, Zak Orth, Craig Bierko, Martha Plimpton, Michael Showalter and Don Hertzfeldt.
The following tropes include:
- '60s Hair: Beehive hairdos for females, pompadours for males, and both are exaggerated for comic effect. The movie's title, which also serves as the name of the high school, alludes to 60s hair in general.
- Accidental Public Confession: Rod tries to cover the fact that Spud and Cherri had drowned in the lake (after he butted them off the road) by saying that they moved to Mexico. Come next year's prom when Spud and Cherri, as skeletons, return that night and attempt to reclaim the crown but Rod refused to believe that that's them by saying out loud they drowned in Echo Lake through a microphone... Nice.
- Alpha Bitch:
- Cherri, at first, who apparently rules the school with her Jerk Jock boyfriend, Rod, and takes pleasure in humiliating Spud for giving her a bogus answer to the teacher's question. She shows a much softer side when she and Spud inadvertently exchange looks.
- Darlene is a straighter example after Cherri dies with Spud and takes over the role of Rod's new girlfriend.
- Alma Mater Song: The titular school's anthem plays during Zip's fantasy of Darlene doing a cheer routine topless, and plays again after a brief Moment of Silence due to Zip's sudden but apparent demise from falling from a scoreboard.
- Artistic License – Biology: Zip electrocutes a frog in his "sex organs" which seems to cause an erection. Frogs don't have penises. Ironically, the scene takes place in biology class.
- Asshole Victim: Zip and Rod. The former's mother even says she's glad he's dead. At his funeral.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: When Rod forces Spud to be Cherri's servent, he hopes Spud falls in-love with her, simply so he has an excuse to brutalize him. And he does, but Rod didn't count on Cherri falling in love with him back.
- Beehive Hairdo: A lot of female characters (and even some males) sport gravity defying hair-dos as part of its '50s-'60s motif.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Exaggerated with Spud and Cherri. They even outright torture each other in one scene only to find themselves staring into each others eyes afterwards... and then quickly turning away.
- Black Comedy: Everything that's immoral, disgusting, and possibly just plain offensive is Played for Laughs.
- Chunky Salsa Rule: A non-video game example. Vomiting up your organs and and football jumping through you? Survivable. Being crushed and drowning? Fatal.
- Cool Car: Rod owns one to which he is very attached with.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Spud and Cherri are nothing but nice to JoJo after they come back from the dead. The only people they antagonize are Rod, Darlene, and their cronies, and most of the school seems to support them.
- Daydream Surprise: Spud bucks Cherri off his back who is literally walking all over him, causing her to fall into a puddle, and then the Earth crumbles while Cherri floats away into the sea as he waves at her smugly. Then as it turns out, it was just his imagination.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Cherri begins to fall in love with Spud after some strong tension.
- Dem Bones: Spud and Cherri (who are apparently undead) return to the following year's prom with their bodies already decomposed. Naturally, everyone is shocked.
- Deranged Animation: As expected of a Bill Plympton cartoon.
- Disney Acid Sequence: Spud and Cherri's kiss stand out in particular simply to visualize the feeling.
- Double Entendre: Discussed. The scene with Rod and Darlene.Darlene: What if I told you that someone else is working on your car?
- Some of the dialogue counts, like a football announcer saying "that cock's got a lot of spunk"* , and Rod telling Cherri that the Reverend has a huge organ* .
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In a way, despite Spud and Cherri both dying. They share a kiss at prom in the end while they symbolically revert to their human forms.
- Eye Scream: Spud, who by then had grown a spine, rebuffs a bully by poking him in the eye with the bully's own toothpick.
- Fingore: Rod demonstrates what he'll do to Spud if he falls in love with his girlfriend Cherri by tearing off a fingernail...that turns out to belong to Zip.
- Foreshadowing: At the beginning when the guy squishes two flies that were, er, having sex on the table, it prompted JoJo to tell them the story of Cherri and Spud. Also, the ballad played a few times in the movie as background music had the lyrics explicitly mention that the couple die on the way to the prom.
- Framing Device: The movie is a story JoJo is telling to a young couple who are on the way to prom.
- Gang of Bullies: Rod terrorizes Spud, with Zip and Dwayne backing him up. After Zip dies, Dwayne becomes Rod's sole support.
- Gorn: The movie dips into it at times.
- For example, Mr. Snerz who after choking on a cigarette, he coughs up all of his entrails on the table. Then the students, with the help of Spud's knowledge in Biology, attempt to hurl it back in in the proper order!
- The aforementioned fingore scene, where Rod graphically tears off Zip's fingernail with a switchblade.
- The Hero Dies: Spud when he drowns in the lake with Cherri.
- High School: The setting of the film. Which gives us...
- High-School Dance: An important topic with the characters to be nominated prom king or queen.
- Jerk Jock: Rod, Cherri's and later Darlene's boyfriend.
- Karmic Death: Rod is devoured by the animals from Spud and Cherri's skeletons after their arrival.
- Lightning Glare: An unlikely usage which indicates two people who are falling in-love with each other, such as when Spud and Cherri accidentally gaze into each other's eyes after the two get into a violent scuffle just seconds before. It's put into use again with Buttercup and Wally before sharing a passionate kiss.
- Mood Whiplash: Gory, surreal imagery, and death is thrown everywhere.
- More so in-universe. Zip seems to have been crushed after falling off the scoreboard and the whole stadium is silent for awhile. Then the cheerleaders begin dancing and everything is back to normal with the crowd cheering and music playing.
- Musical Spoiler: "Ballad of Spud and Cherri", which plays as JoJo begins the story, pretty much tells us point blank that they die on their way to prom.
- Raging Stiffie: Rod gives Zip one in the form of an aphrodisiac disguised as a tonic so he could have the courage to ask Darlene out for the prom. After drinking the whole thing, he began humping at just about everyone and everything.
- Real After All: Wally and Buttercup don't believe JoJo's story about Spud and Cherri going to prom as skeletons. However, Wally catches a glimpse of Cherri behind them. Wally and Buttercup barely miss them walking out the door and peel off the road, but they notice the flower trail left behind as a symbol of Spud and Cherri's strong love. The teens finally buy it.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: "The Ballad of Spud and Cherri" states their deaths were an accident. It wasn't. They were murdered by Rod and Dwayne.
- Seemingly-Wholesome '50s Girl: Every prim and proper looking young lady in the high school is somewhat promiscuous.
- Silly Brain Diagram: One scene shows Cherri's brain, divided into sections with nothing but pictures showing her doing things like preening herself and putting on a crown, showing that she's a vain and mean popular girl. But slowly a picture of Spud appears in her brain, to signify that she's starting to like him.
- The Starscream: Darlene is Cherri's best friend who wants to steal the title of prom queen from her as well as her best friend's boyfriend. She does so by suggesting to Rod that Spud is fooling around with his girlfriend, causing his animosity towards the new kid to escalate leading to him eventually bumping him off the road with Cherri, who by now made it clear has decided to go steady with Spud.
- Still Sucks Thumb: Darlene starts sucking her thumb in a mix of fear and panic when she sees Cherri and Spud's reanimated skeletons usurp her and Rod's title for prom king and queen.
- Teenage Death Song: If such a song was adapted into a film (and some random, crazy stuff thrown in), this would be it.
- Together in Death: Spud and Cherri are forced off the road by a jilted Rod and into the lake. As the car sinks to the bottom, they share one last kiss.
- Too Dumb to Live: Zip, literally. He's the first one to die after dry humping a giant image of a chicken on the scoreboard and falling from it.
- Unreliable Narrator: The young couple have their reservations about how true the story JoJo is telling them, and seem to infer that the crazy stuff happening in it may or may not be just JoJo's own embellishments. Though Cherri and Spud coming back as skeletons might be true.
