YMMV / School Ties

• Genius Bonus: The poem McGivern fails to recite is a French translation of Keats' "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles", in which the author feels like a failure and that he is doomed to die soon.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Plur-ay!"
  • The "Cowards!" scene that Family Guy referenced.
• Retroactive Recognition: This film has some of Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Chris O'Donnell and Anthony Rapp's first roles, so it's inevitable. As a result, there have been TV commercials advertising the movie by focusing on this aspect, with no reference to the actual plot.
• Signature Scene: The scene where David returns to his dorm room, finding a Swastika banner with the words "Go Home Jew!" on it and challenging the perpetrator to a fight, only for him to be left out in the rain.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: For a school movie, it's surprisingly this. Apart from David and Reece, none of the other students are likable and are cruel antisemitic jerkasses. Once David is discovered to be Jewish, everybody straight up abandons and harasses him including David’s girlfriend. The worse part, there is no payoff to the crap David goes through. No one grows out of their petty ways and all of them remain cruel with no comeuppance. Even after Dillion is caught cheating, David has little to no friends and is still stuck with his anti-Semitic classmates, the only silver lining being that he is still in school and is determined to use the chance to get into Harvard anyway.
• The Woobie:
  • David when everyone finds out he's Jewish.
  • Mack after he fails his French exam.

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