Junior High School is a 1978 musical featurette

Featurette

Featurette is a term used in the American film industry to designate a film whose length is approximately three quarters of a reel, or about 20–44 minutes in running time - thus midway between a short subject and a feature film; thus it is a "small feature"...

 starring P. David Ebersole

P. David Ebersole

Peter David Ebersole is an American television director and independent filmmaker. He began his film career as a child actor, playing the lead in the musical "Junior High School" , which also starred Paula Abdul. Since then, he won AFI's Franklin J...

 as Jerry Sanders. The film chronicles the first day of term at a dramatized school of seventh and eighth graders, and consists of seven songs along with several dance numbers. The only member of the cast to become well-known later is Paula Abdul

Paula Abdul

Paula Julie Abdul is an American singer-songwriter, dancer, choreographer, actress and television personality.In the 1980s, Abdul rose from cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers to highly sought-after choreographer at the height of the music video era before scoring a string of pop music-R&B hits...

, though she played a relatively minor role in the film.

Plot

The story begins with Sherry (Paula Abdul) declaring plans to hold a party that night. Upon hearing about this party, Jerry's friend Paul (Kirk Burnett) encourages him to ask his crush Lori Scott (Karen Capelle) to accompany him to the event. On his way to doing this Jerry encounters several obstacles, including repeated run-ins with Keith (Mikal Robert Taylor), a school bully, and Vicki (Toni Mazarin), an ill-intentioned girl who hopes Jerry will ask her to the party so she can spite a previous boyfriend.