1985, Savage Steve Holland (One Crazy Summer) -- download
Greendale, California. Lane Meyer (John Cusack, Hot Tub Time Machine) is obsessed with Beth (Amanda Wyss, Assassin's Fury), his girlfriend of six months, a pretty, popular blonde. Obsessed. Stalker levels. Photos everywhere, comical extremes such as having her face atop every hanger in his closet so it looks like she's wearing his clothes. Moments after we are exposed to this, she dumps him for the pretty, popular, blonde jock captain of the ski team, Roy Stalin (Aaron Dozier, this was his only feature; guess acting wasn't for him). As expected, Roy is also a bully, and oddly, the movie positions Lane as the counter-nerd, despite it being obvious he dated Beth and skis and has generally higher levels of confidence that most 80s nerds would not. Maybe it isn't helped that his best friend is 80s uber-nerd/stoner Charles de Mar (seminal nerd Curtis Armstrong, American Dad!).
Time doesn't lend itself well to what we are comfortable with --- this level of obsession is just creepy these days, and most plots position it as such. Even creepier is the sub-plot side-plot of Lane's neighbour having an exchange student from France who is constantly subjected to the heavy handed attentions of the fat nerd boy, entirely encouraged to do so by his overbearing mother.
The movie is entirely about Lane trying to get Beth back, amid farcical, absurdist level of weird shit happening around him. For example, his family owes the paperboy $2, so the kid stalks Lane everywhere shouting, "Two dollars !!", which I have been quoting since -- that's fourty years, folks. And his mom is a trad-wife constantly trying new recipes that are less food, more toxic experiments creating new life forms -- why is boiled bacon blue? Every time Lane stops his family car at the lights, two "Asian kids" pull up beside him, visually challenging him to a race, one spouting off like Howard Cosell (Google him kids), but as soon as they are about to pull away, Lane backs into the owner of a local burger joint. The movie is pretty much non-stop non-sequitur situations / running gags, in between the plot to get Beth back by skiing down some deadly peak near their town.
In the 80s, I loved the lunacy of this movie, the utter weirdness of it. I probably had it on VHS. And, as already mentioned, I have been quoting it for four decades. It does not hold up. I can still see the absurdist charm that might have it show up in retro rep theatres now, but... I doubt it. This is more likely one of the movies that the 75 year old owner of the local rep theatre forces on the 20sumthins of every generation, lauding its accomplishments, not understanding why most just don't get it.
I no longer do.
Oh, in case you are wondering, the title of the movie refers to Lane's first thoughts after Beth dumps him -- suicide. The movie intersperses all the weird shit with scenes of Lane failing to kill himself, while everyone around him is oblivious to him trying to commit suicide. I am not sure anyone would do this now.
It certainly was from another time and another era.
ReplyDeleteIt's weird/surprising/sad that there are those people who cling to certain comedies of their past without reconciling how dated the comedy is, and react strongly to criticisms of it as if it's still a relevant part of their identity today. I think it's important to acknowledge both how comedy of the past shaped you but also acknowledge how it's aged and to reflect on how you react to it, and why you react to it that way.
I like this review.