Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

jts0405 In 1975 a television sitcom known as Welcome Back, Kotter started. The series was created by Gabe Kaplan and Alan Sacks and ran through several seasons. Each episode would begin with Gabe Kotter (Gabe Kaplan) telling a joke to his wife Julie and the show would also end in the same way. The whole plot is that Kotter is a teacher and he teaches underacheiving students known as The Sweathogs. Within the Sweathogs we meet Vinnie Barbarino, Juan Epstein, Freddie Washington and Arnold Horshack. The show always can put a smile on your face no matter what. It is just so incredibly goofy and cheesy that you just can't help but watch it several times. This is one of my all time favorite shows and it gets from me a 10/10.

hfan77 I really enjoyed Welcome Back, Kotter. It was a very funny show with an outstanding ensemble cast anchored by Gabe Kaplan, who brought lots of humor to the class of unteachable sweathogs with jokes and impressions. I always got a kick out of his uncle jokes in the opening and closing of each episode, including the ones when he was telling a joke to a turkey and to a computer used as an electronic teaching device. As for the sweathogs, they were a riot. John Travolta catapulted his way to success as the macho, monosyllabic ("What? Where?") Vinnie Barbarino, Robert Hegyes portrayed TV's first Puerto Rican Jew Juan (Little Juan) Epstein and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs made me crack up every time he said "Hi there!" But my favorite of the sweathogs was Arnold Horshack. Ron Pallilo's portrayal of one of TV's funniest nerds was so outstanding, from his nasal voice to his inimitable laugh. His laugh was the funniest on TV prior to Steve Urkel. Gabe constantly got grief from vice principal (later principal) Mr. Woodman, who kept barging into his class with the same frequency Frank & Marie Barone did to their son years later on Everybody Loves Raymond. Let's not forget Marcia Strassman as Gabe's wife Julie, who didn't have much to do in most of the show until the fourth season. As for the fourth season, the least that can be said, the better. it was horrible without Kaplan and Travolta on the show full-time and Stephen Shortridge as Beau. It was like watching the Sanford and Son episodes a couple of years earlier without Redd Foxx. I'll wrap this up by mentioning the theme song by John Sebastian that made it to No. 1 on the pop charts and resurrected his career. it was one of the best 70s TV theme songs. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back.

Brian Washington This was one of the most memorable shows of the 1970's. One thing that made it great was the interaction between Kotter and the Sweathogs. Gabe Kaplan really helped create a perfect balance between having a great comic show as well as dealing with some current topics such as drug abuse, teen pregnancy and gang violence. However, the show really went into sharp decline after suffering the double whammy of the departures of Kaplan and John Travolta. Also, it would have been interesting to see Vinnie, Freddie, Juan and Arnold graduate and see how they would have done in the real world as it was originally planned in the final season. Instead, we got a new Sweathog in Beau and the chemistry between the boys was forever ruined. This show should have ended on a higher note than it did.

alpha-37 ...and it's driving me nuts.JG: I remember there was one episode where Epstein paints Kotter's wife naked on the side of the school. They didn't show any details, of course. I hope that's not a spoiler.JL: Kotter is the prodigal son of NYC. He has gone out in the world with ambition, and now returned to find that his real calling was right at home. I often reflected on this difficulty as a youngster, seeing the elevated trains and dirty streets during the closing credits. I would always struggle with the duality between ambition for new experiences, and sticking with what you are good at. How would a neurotic Kotter sound after a hard day with the sweathogs?