Cotton Candy (1978)

Director
Ron Howard

Main cast
Charles Martin Smith; Clint Howard; Leslie King; Mark Wheeler

Genres
Music, Comedy

Description
1970's made-for-TV movies about high school teens embroiled in rock band drama have formed a sub-genre that holds immeasurable hypnotic powers over a lot of my generation. Worn copies of these types of movies are often traded amongst fans like rare gold (or drugs). One rarely seen example in that particular library is Cotton Candy. The film spins the pimple-ridden rhapsody of a group of high school misfits who form a good-time bubblegum rock band, named Cotton Candy, and are thrown into direct, vicious competition with the "cool kids" crowd; their classmate's popular hard rock act Rapid Fire. The awkward-years war reaches it's apex during a "battle of the bands" competition, sponsored by a local mall on a Saturday afternoon, in scenes filled with screaming high school girls in designer jeans and winged-hair (perhaps the first concert film footage alternated with cutaway shots of Orange Julius and Spencer Gifts signage). (cont. http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/03/ron_howards_cot.html)


Similar movies

It's almost graduation day for high school seniors Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay, Chad, Ryan and Taylor ― and the thought of heading off in separate directions after leaving East High has these Wildcats thinking they need to do something they'll remember forever. Together with the rest of the Wildcats, they stage a spring musical reflecting their hopes and fears about the future and their unforgettable experiences growing up together. But with graduation approaching and college plans in question, what will become of the dreams, romances, and friendships of East High's senior Wildcats?
A frizzy-haired, pink-cheeked outcast named Spork navigates her way through the annals of junior high.
Troy (Zac Efron), the popular captain of the basketball team, and Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens), the brainy and beautiful member of the academic club, break all the rules of East High society when they secretly audition for the leads in the school's musical. As they reach for the stars and follow their dreams, everyone learns about acceptance, teamwork, and being yourself. And it's all set to fun tunes and very cool dance moves!
A group of rock-music-loving students, with the help of the Ramones, take over their school to combat its newly installed oppressive administration.
The East High Wildcats are ready to have the time of their lives. Troy (Zac Efron) is thrilled when he’s offered a job in a country club, but it’s all part of Sharpay’s (Ashley Tisdale) plot to lure him away from Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens). How will it all turn out? All questions are answered on the night of the club’s Talent Show.
A visit to a natural history museum proves catastrophic for two high school rivals, an overachiever and a jock, when an ancient Aztec statue casts a spell that causes them to switch bodies and see exactly what it's like to walk in the other's shoes.
Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.
Aliens, who look like clowns, arrive on Earth to capture and harvest people in order to use them as sustenance.
Two not-too-bright party girls reinvent themselves for their high school reunion. Armed with a borrowed Jaguar, new clothes and the story of their success as the inventors of Post-it notes, Romy and Michele descend on their alma mater, but their façade crumbles quickly.
During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.
Richard Clark has just left the well-known Wellington Academy to teach at Marion Barry High School. Now, he will try to inspire the D-average students into making good grades and try to woo a fellow teacher.
The film tells the story of the Michelucci family, from the nineteen-seventies to the present day: the central character is the stunningly beautiful Anna, the lively, frivolous and sometimes embarrassing mother of Bruno and Valeria. Everything begins in the Summer of 1971, at the annual Summer beauty pageant held at Livorno’s most popular bathing establishment. Anna is unexpectedly crowned “Most Beautiful Mother”, unwittingly stirring the violent jealousy of her husband. From then on, chaos strikes the family and for Anna, Bruno and his sister Valeria, it is the start of an adventure that will only end thirty years later. Bruno ends up living in Milan after managing to escape from Livorno and his mother. He will return to his hometown at the end of the film to be at his mother’s side during her very last days.
Adolescence is like a heavy rain. Even though you catch a cold from it, you still look forward to experiencing it once again. Ko-Teng has several close friends who had a crush on Shen Chia-Yi. Those friends of Ko's thus moved in unison from Ching Chengs junior high school straight into the senior high school division in pursuit of her. Naughty in nature, Ko was ordered by their homeroom teacher to sit in front of honor student Shen for her to keep close tabs on him. The two hadn't hit it off at first but Ko gradually fell for Shen, who was always pressuring him to study hard. On the other hand, Shen became impressed by the contrasting values Ko represented. Ko started pursuing Shen but Shen remained hesitant.
A bullied teen stumbles into possession of a top-secret government formula that turns his dog invisible and gives it the power of speech.
Two teenage girls discover that mermaids really do exist after a violent storm washes one ashore. The mermaid, a sassy creature named Aquamarine, is determined to prove to her father that real love exists, and enlists the girls' help in winning the heart of a handsome lifeguard.
In small-town Texas, high school football is a religion, 17-year-old schoolboys carry the hopes of an entire community onto the gridiron every Friday night. When star quarterback Lance Harbor suffers an injury, the Coyotes are forced to regroup under the questionable leadership of John Moxon, a second-string quarterback with a slightly irreverent approach to the game.
Barricade the doors. Lock the windows. Because he's baaaack. That one-boy wrecking crew, Dennis the Menace, returns for more mischief and mayhem. Based on the comic strip and TV show about a mischievous little boy with a gift for the potentially lethal prank.
3 of Reagan High School's most popular girls pretend to kidnap their friend by shoving a jawbreaker into the victim's mouth to keep her from screaming. Their plan goes awry when the girl swallows the jawbreaker, choking to death. Now the leader of the pack will do anything to keep the accident a secret.
A high school valedictorian who gets baked with the local stoner finds himself the subject of a drug test. The situation causes him to concoct an ambitious plan to get his entire graduating class to face the same fate, and fail.
When Terry Griffith loses her high school's writing competition, she's convinced that it's because she's a girl. So Terry decides to change high schools and pose as a boy to prove her point. Her brother, Buddy, helps her pass as a guy so well that she is soon making friends with the boys at school, including the attractive Rick, who becomes her new best friend. But her gender-swapping makes things difficult when she falls in love with him.
A bombardier in World War II tries desperately to escape the insanity of the war. However, sometimes insanity is the only sane way cope with a crazy situation. Catch-22 is a parody of a "military mentality" and of a bureaucratic society in general.
A high school teacher's personal life becomes complicated as he works with students during the school elections.
When Berke Landers, a popular high school basketball star, gets dumped by his life-long girlfriend, Allison, he soon begins to lose it. But with the help of his best friend Felix's sister Kelly, he follows his ex into the school's spring musical. Thus ensues a love triangle loosely based upon Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", where Berke is only to find himself getting over Allison and beginning to fall for Kelly.
Two friends originally from Izmir-Eşrefpaşa have settled in Istanbul… While Tayyar (Hüseyin Soysalan) has become a mafia leader based on his passion for power and ruling, Davut (Turgay Tanülkü) has been managing a café in his small neighbourhood. Both have loved the same woman, Madam Eleni (Sermin Hürmeriç). But she had to get married to Tayyar despite her love for Davut. She also had a daughter called Duygu (Deniz Özpınar). However, Tayyar, knowing that Eleni’s heart belongs to Davut, leaves Eleni and his daughter alone. Tayyar, continuously looking for ways for revenge, finally finds it in convincing Nusret (Burak Tarık), Davut’s adopted son, to choose his dirty way. Nusret, the tough-guy of the neighbourhood gets into a big dilemma since he couldn’t make a choice between his girl as well as the people he loves and money and power.
Small lives begin at the end of high school for this surreal society. A senior who married young must contend with her life, love, and pursuit of individuality and femininity in a narcissistic, misogynistic world of irony. Gwen Adams, her husband Holden, and school rival Hilary complete the love triangle as Principal Mann makes their lives living hell.
Set in a senior high school class, J.J. (Michael J. Fox) pursues the girlfriend of a rival from a higher clique which culminates in a race at the end of the movie between the two rivals in this light comedy.
At a high-school party, four friends find that losing their collective virginity isn't as easy as they had thought. But they still believe that they need to do so before college. To motivate themselves, they enter a pact to try to be the first to "score." And of course, the senior prom is their last best chance. As the fateful date draws near, the boys wonder who among them will get lucky.
Two men get laid off and have to become stay-at-home dads when they can't find jobs, which inspires them to open their own day-care center.
When Mystery, Inc. are guests of honor at the grand opening of the Coolsville Museum of Criminology, a masked villain shows up and creates havoc before stealing the costumes of the gang's most notorious villains...Could it be that their nemesis, mad scientist Jonathan Jacobo has returned and is trying to recreate their deadliest foes?
Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.
A high school girl, Sayaka Kudō was the bottom of the class. After a year, she improved her deviation value from 30 to 70, then passed Keio University that is considered one of the most difficult to enter in Japan.
Hal, a 15-year-old high-school student with a minor yet socially alienating (and painful) disability: he stutters uncontrollably. Determined to work through the problem, Hal opts for an extreme route he joins the school debating team, which sends him on a headfirst plunge into breakneck speech competitions and offers a much-needed boost toward correcting the problem.
With help from her best friends (Rumer Willis, Kristin Cavallari), a high schooler (Tania Raymonde) turns the tables on a jock (Ryan Merriman) who plans to deflower her.
A presumed-dead man's current wife and former wives squabble over his funeral arrangements.
Six high school seniors decide to break into the Princeton Testing Center so they can steal the answers to their upcoming SAT tests and all get perfect scores.
Scooby and the gang are attending a concert at Vampire Rock, Australia when the Yowie Yahoo vampire starts kidnapping the musicians.
A transfer student at a rough high school tries joining the cheer-leading squad and finds that she not only has to face off against the head cheerleader, but also against her former school in preparation for a cheer-off competition.
Maria Laura "Mala" is an actress with little luck, but she is successful working for other women, seducing their boyfriends to know if they are faithful or not. But everything changes when her dream to perform in her acting career depends on a job to be performed with Santiago who breaks the pattern and shakes her professional convictions.
Movie star Roxy Carmichael is abandoning the bright lights of Hollywood, Calif. and returning to her small Ohio hometown -- at least long enough to dedicate a city building. And now the whole town of Clyde is bracing for Carmichael's return, most of all her now-married old flame Denton Webb and troubled teen Dinky Bossetti. An orphan with few friends, Dinky is convinced that Carmichael is her birth mother, and that the actress will reclaim her when she returns.
A guardian angel has 24 hours to convince a soul that life on Earth is worth the effort.
The pupils at a high school next to a nuclear power plant start acting and looking strange after buying contaminated drugs from a plant worker.
Determined to prove herself, Officer Judy Hopps, the first bunny on Zootopia's police force, jumps at the chance to crack her first case - even if it means partnering with scam-artist fox Nick Wilde to solve the mystery.
Gay people across the U.S. go on strike when a governor refuses to approve of gay marriages.
A budding romance between noble underachiever Lloyd Dobler and high school valedictorian Diane Court is threatened when Diane's overly possessive, disapproving father interferes with their relationship. With a prized scholarship to study abroad hanging in the balance, Diane must find a way to make both men happy.
She's on Duty (Jambok-geunmu) is a wacky South Korean comedy about a police detective, Chun Jae-in, who goes undercover in a high school to protect Seung-hee, the daughter of notorious gangster Cha Young-jae.
When Robin meets the lovely Jamika he thinks he's in heaven. But when he meets her friend Bebe's children, whom she is looking after, he knows he's in hell. Bebe's kids are the most obnoxious, irritating, pain in the butt kids he has ever met. Written by Brian W Martz
The ongoing war between the canine and feline species is put on hold when they join forces to thwart a rogue cat spy with her own sinister plans for conquest.
What's a high school kid got to do to be popular? Just let down his hair and howl! Starring Michael J. Fox (Back to the Future) Teen Wolf is an outrageous comedy about a shy teenager with more than a changing voice to contend with... he's a budding young werewolf! And when his new-found powers help him score at basketball - and with the popular girls - he has some pretty hairy decisions to make.
Wilbur the pig is scared of the end of the season, because he knows that come that time, he will end up on the dinner table. He hatches a plan with Charlotte, a spider that lives in his pen, to ensure that this will never happen.
A 16-year-old international assassin yearning for a "normal" adolescence fakes her own death and enrolls as a senior in a suburban high school. She quickly learns that being popular can be more painful than getting water-boarded.
A teenager teams up with the daughter of young adult horror author R.L. Stine after the writer's imaginary demons are set free on the town of Madison, Delaware.
This is a touching story of two completely different students from two completely different worlds. One is a rich male repeating his third year of high school and the other a poor girl in her second year of university struggling to make ends meet.
Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it's no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley's mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley's main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.
Exceptionally ambitious high schooler Matthew has aspirations for a career in politics when he falls in love with his gorgeous 19-year-old neighbor, Danielle. But Matthew's bright future is jeopardized when he finds Danielle was once a porn star. As Danielle's past catches up with her, Matthew's love for her forces him to re-evaluate his goals.
Viola Johnson is in a real jam. Complications threaten her scheme to pose as her twin brother, Sebastian, and take his place at a new boarding school. She falls in love with her handsome roommate, Duke, who loves beautiful Olivia, who has fallen for Sebastian! As if that were not enough, Viola's twin returns from London ahead of schedule but has no idea that his sister has already replaced him on campus.
Four best friends, about to graduate from high school, must find a way to raise money to help a family member in need. When one of them discovers her banker father having an affair, the foursome plots to rob his bank during graduation ceremonies. When things don't go according to plan, they end up learning more about themselves in one day than they ever did in school.
Four bored, occasionally high and always ineffective Vermont state troopers must prove their worth to the governor or lose their jobs. After stumbling on a drug ring, they plan to make a bust, but a rival police force is out to steal the glory.
Everyone is searching for love in director Brian Hecker's semi-autobiographical story. Danny Stein, a high school senior at the bottom of the social food chain, needs a prom date. As a cause of anxiety for Danny, Bart Beeber, the nerdiest guy in school, has already found a date -- and booked a hotel room. At the same time, Danny's divorced parents are both looking for relationships again.
Charismatic teen Ferris Bueller plays hooky in Chicago with his girlfriend and best friend.

© Valossa 2015–2024