Variety
A dramatized real-life scandal of 1980s prep-school drug dealing plays like a tepid compilation of fictive cliches in “The Preppie Connection.” Joseph Castelo’s third feature stars Thomas Mann (“Me and Earl and the Dying Girl”) as a working-class scholarship student whose attempts to fit in with the brahmin youth at an elite preparatory institution somehow lead to cocaine-running directly from the slums of Bogota, Colombia. Unconvincingly presented in a way that belies the factual basis of a case that won national notoriety at the time, the film will make serviceable small-screen fodder, but lacks the deeper insight or distinguishing directorial style that might have tempted arthouse distributors.
