Jim Belushi I never knew you could cuss so much
In 1986 a young Rob Lowe made the scene. He was the Brad Pitt of the 80s and a heart throb to millions of girls across the country (this is pre-Atlanta). He could literally do no wrong at the box office. Armed with a young, vibrant girl named Demi Moore, they created one of the toughest movies about a relationship that the 80s had ever seen.
Lowe stars as Danny Martin, a young and upcoming guy who is trying to find his way through an absent love life that is mentored only by his loud mouth friend Bernie Litgo (Belushi). Bernie takes him out, shows him the ropes with picking up women and tells him of strange stories of burning hotel rooms and pros. When Martin takes over his own reins and meets up with a girl named Debbie, things get hot pretty fast. Things are so fast that less than a year into the relationship Debbie and Danny move in together. Young love only lasts so long as they both find out what being in a relationship truly means and asks for.
I’m a little in-between about this film. The concept of two people getting together and basing their relationship solely on young love and sex is not too far off to believe. When I was in college (and out) I would see this happening all the time. For most people reading this review there is a great chance that you’re in something similar right now. For guys out there we’re all Danny in some way or another. Somewhere along the way we’ve met someone that we truly believe is the one, done rash things and ended up broken hearted; in that context the movie is very believable.
Now, with that said, I’m not sure that anyone wouldn’t have killed poor Elizabeth Perkins’ character by the second time meeting her. Joan (Perkins) is a royal bitch in the movie and actually brings the story down just a smidge. She plays an overbearing friend who can’t stand giving up her own time with Debbie so that Debbie can be happy with Danny. Her attitude, while funny at times, is written way too strongly and gets in the way of the main story at times. If I was Debbie I would have had a cat fight with Joan a long time ago. If you look at the box art her character already disgusts you and you have no idea why. What’s even worse is that I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Elizabeth Perkins smile…. ever. I hope she’s happier than Joan. Anyway, she’s a character that interferes with the flow of the story and one that is poorly written. Perkins is much better than that character so it has to be the writer who screwed that up.
Outside of Joan, the movie also suffers from getting lost about three-quarters of the way through. You believe that this young love met, you believe that it bloomed, you believe that they did rash things (like move in together on a whim), but when everything goes dreadfully wrong it looks like the story is trying to put bad things in to places in the story where they clearly don’t belong. There isn’t a smooth transition to the transgression and by the end you really don’t like Danny and you feel some animosity towards Debbie. Basically, you just don’t care about either character and don’t wish for them to get back together. Regretfully, the movie ends with the impression that these incompatible people are going to give this disaster another shot.
In the short amount of time that this movie ran it actually did some good things. The biggest is that it established the personalities of these characters pretty damn quickly. You must credit the acting and the writing for that. Each actor appeared to know what he or she wanted to do when they got going with their respective characters. Each did their best to smooth out the rough parts of the story and, outside of poor Perkins, each succeeded. The movie depends on the characters and they certainly do deliver.
1986 looks great!
For as many movies that I’ve seen from the 80s that have been converted to blu-ray, this is one of the more impressive. The sites and sounds of Chicago never looked so good. One scene in particular stands out in my mind as just gorgeous. When Debbie and Danny are walking next to Lake Michigan just seeing the water ripple is amazing. There is so much detail to the wave that you’ll swear you’re looking out a window. The audio is good too, if you like 80s music.
As for the features, I’m happy to report that there are a couple (literally):
– Edward Zwick (director) and Rob Lowe in Conversation
– Original Making Of Featurette
While certainly there isn’t enough here, what you get is something pretty good. The conversation is interesting between director and actor. I’m not a fan of original featurettes, so I wasn’t completely in love with the one included. I would rather see new interviews with actors and crew.