I ignored this movie for an entire generation's timespan, assuming from its promotion upon release (not to mention its resemblance to that of equally vacuous-looking movies that were coming out in the same time period) that it would be by turns, vapid and insipid. But, recently, I reached some point or other in my life where it dawned on me that here a famous movie had been made about the place where I started high school and yet I had never seen it. Having over the years become a sort of hobbyist of classic movies, that suddenly struck me as incongruous. So, on that basis alone, I ordered a copy, albeit not without the hope of seeing something that would resonate personally at some level (and This, boys and girls, is what happens to you when you get Old.)
It turned out to be a total disappointment from one end to the other. Even the setting, which I had so hoped to see reprised in some recognizable manner, was all wrong. The story derives from what was allegedly a non-fiction book written about Clairemont High School, in the neighborhood of Clairemont, and one block off Clairemont Drive, in San Diego, California. But according to a graphic included among the Special Features, this was shot at Van Nuys High School, a campus at least a generation older and looking every minute of it, and on the far side of Los Angeles from San Diego. To put that in perspective, you'd might as well make a movie about Long Island and shoot it in New Jersey; or for that matter, about Texas A&M and shoot it at what Texans call, "UT" (the Texans will get it. I think.) I never felt for one second like I was back in any part of San Diego, much less Clairemont High.
And it was all downhill from there after that. My second impression, after that initial disappointment, was to find myself debating whether it would be better to characterize this movie as boring and dumb, or just dumb and boring. Comparisons to *American Graffiti* are vastly overblown. That movie is interesting, intelligent, compelling, and is on the American Film Institute's Top 100 List, and in my experience is flawlessly made and just gets better with every successive viewing. This movie is primarily, as another reviewer here eloquently observed, just an old-fashioned ABC-TV "teen issues" After School Special with glaring insertions of profanity and surprisingly explicit pornography (the original cut is said to have drawn an "X" rating -- ! -- and at certain places it is not hard to see why; 2AM Cinemax R-rated soft-core porn is more heavily romanticized). Even then, the old TV show would surely have done something distinctively more effective with the dramatic aspects of the issues of sociosexual incompetence and exploitation raised in this movie. In this regard, the blase, "matter-of-fact" treatment of these issues may result from nothing more than that the director is from The Bronx, i.e., New York, New York, where the citizenry (or should it be, denizenry?) is famous for being blase and matter-of-fact about all kinds of things normal Americans would find strange, unusual, or even shocking. (One may even wonder how autobiographical the treatment of the nude misadventures of the female lead in this movie are.) But in that regard, it makes it out of place for this movie. This movie is about Southern California. It is not a commentary on the cultural quirks of New Yawk. (By the way, if you want to see a movie showcasing the cultural quirks of New York, watch *The Taking of Pelham 123* - the original version, starring Walter Matthau, and not the faint remakes. Great stuff.)
And were that not bad enough, the sex that unfortunately dominates this movie is bad to the point of totally clueless, and even if that were in fact the whole point, looked (if this is not giving too much away) more like something from *junior* high school experimentation than anything I would expect from somebody hovering, as these characters are supposed to be, around the age of 17. Moreover, if you want to do a movie about sex in high school, you have to cover the whole subject, including unmistakable references to the majority who are more like the Ratner character than anybody else you see in this movie. The fact that the Jennifer Jason Leigh character (especially paired as she is here exclusively with the Phoebe Cates character) is an especially notable little slut for a high school girl in the late 1970's is not ever made clear here. Even worse, this character is shown here ONLY in her sexual confusion mode. We know absolutely not one other thing about her personality. These omissions are not just bad character development, but just poor storytelling, storytelling simply incompetent by the standards of any decent writer even 60 seconds older than Cameron Crowe. And lastly, if the intent of this movie is to be light-hearted comedy, this sequence has no place in this movie. Whether you see it as heavy material, as people normally would, or merely as blase Bronx beauty-shop gossip material, there is nothing light-hearted about it.
Meanwhile, this drivel fails to be relieved by anything compelling in any way of the other story lines, which are universally monumentally contrived, exaggerated, and in the end, simply hackneyed. Much as Ray Walston was a noteworthy actor, even the Mr. Hand subplot is thin and lacking in genuine wit.
Nor is it relieved by any great moments of high hilarity. The only time it actually got me to sit up and take notice at all was the autopsy scene (yeah, that's about where the way things were going . . . But at least, for a second there, I mistakenly began to wonder if this thing were suddenly going to finally catch fire). This is no Animal House; it is no Caddy Shack; there is no moment anywhere here that rises to the level of Richard Dreyfuss crawling under a police car to wrap a chain around the rear axle.
It helps not, apparently, that director Hecklering (director who?) is no George Lucas (you know, the guy who calls himself "not a very good film-maker" and "not good with actors"), no John Landis, or no Harold Ramis, either. She is not even either half of the Coen Brothers. A treatment by any of the aforementioned would have almost certainly elevated the execution of this thing to the level of its otherwise incomprehensible hype.
The bottom line is, Cameron Crowe, the author of the original book who was also erroneously permitted to do the screenplay adaptation here, must be one of those writers who knows how to string words together with the greatest of fluidity without having hardly anything to say. Certainly, that was the case here. He is no Billy Wilder (about whom, ironically, he eventually wrote a book) or even an I. A. L. Diamond. And that so many people believe this movie says anything worth hearing is again a testament to how, now well into fat, hairy, balding, sagging middle age, certain people could find nothing wrong with voting for a sleaze-covered, slime-drenched, lying, cheating, and stealing, utterly incompetent and iconically irresponbsible megalomaniac real estate developer (don't they know that a "real estate developer" is just a crooked used car salesman with a much, much bigger line of credit?) for President of the United States. It's yet another testament to the moronocracy to which our once-mighty civilization has fallen, and out of respect to talented actors like Ray Walston, Sean Penn, or Forest Whitaker (however tiny his part here) as well as the cameramen and other unseen entirely competent production people signed on to make this in order to be able to meet their mortgage payments and other expense of daily living, I leave it with a consolation-prize-quality rating of five out of ten.
It turned out to be a total disappointment from one end to the other. Even the setting, which I had so hoped to see reprised in some recognizable manner, was all wrong. The story derives from what was allegedly a non-fiction book written about Clairemont High School, in the neighborhood of Clairemont, and one block off Clairemont Drive, in San Diego, California. But according to a graphic included among the Special Features, this was shot at Van Nuys High School, a campus at least a generation older and looking every minute of it, and on the far side of Los Angeles from San Diego. To put that in perspective, you'd might as well make a movie about Long Island and shoot it in New Jersey; or for that matter, about Texas A&M and shoot it at what Texans call, "UT" (the Texans will get it. I think.) I never felt for one second like I was back in any part of San Diego, much less Clairemont High.
And it was all downhill from there after that. My second impression, after that initial disappointment, was to find myself debating whether it would be better to characterize this movie as boring and dumb, or just dumb and boring. Comparisons to *American Graffiti* are vastly overblown. That movie is interesting, intelligent, compelling, and is on the American Film Institute's Top 100 List, and in my experience is flawlessly made and just gets better with every successive viewing. This movie is primarily, as another reviewer here eloquently observed, just an old-fashioned ABC-TV "teen issues" After School Special with glaring insertions of profanity and surprisingly explicit pornography (the original cut is said to have drawn an "X" rating -- ! -- and at certain places it is not hard to see why; 2AM Cinemax R-rated soft-core porn is more heavily romanticized). Even then, the old TV show would surely have done something distinctively more effective with the dramatic aspects of the issues of sociosexual incompetence and exploitation raised in this movie. In this regard, the blase, "matter-of-fact" treatment of these issues may result from nothing more than that the director is from The Bronx, i.e., New York, New York, where the citizenry (or should it be, denizenry?) is famous for being blase and matter-of-fact about all kinds of things normal Americans would find strange, unusual, or even shocking. (One may even wonder how autobiographical the treatment of the nude misadventures of the female lead in this movie are.) But in that regard, it makes it out of place for this movie. This movie is about Southern California. It is not a commentary on the cultural quirks of New Yawk. (By the way, if you want to see a movie showcasing the cultural quirks of New York, watch *The Taking of Pelham 123* - the original version, starring Walter Matthau, and not the faint remakes. Great stuff.)
And were that not bad enough, the sex that unfortunately dominates this movie is bad to the point of totally clueless, and even if that were in fact the whole point, looked (if this is not giving too much away) more like something from *junior* high school experimentation than anything I would expect from somebody hovering, as these characters are supposed to be, around the age of 17. Moreover, if you want to do a movie about sex in high school, you have to cover the whole subject, including unmistakable references to the majority who are more like the Ratner character than anybody else you see in this movie. The fact that the Jennifer Jason Leigh character (especially paired as she is here exclusively with the Phoebe Cates character) is an especially notable little slut for a high school girl in the late 1970's is not ever made clear here. Even worse, this character is shown here ONLY in her sexual confusion mode. We know absolutely not one other thing about her personality. These omissions are not just bad character development, but just poor storytelling, storytelling simply incompetent by the standards of any decent writer even 60 seconds older than Cameron Crowe. And lastly, if the intent of this movie is to be light-hearted comedy, this sequence has no place in this movie. Whether you see it as heavy material, as people normally would, or merely as blase Bronx beauty-shop gossip material, there is nothing light-hearted about it.
Meanwhile, this drivel fails to be relieved by anything compelling in any way of the other story lines, which are universally monumentally contrived, exaggerated, and in the end, simply hackneyed. Much as Ray Walston was a noteworthy actor, even the Mr. Hand subplot is thin and lacking in genuine wit.
Nor is it relieved by any great moments of high hilarity. The only time it actually got me to sit up and take notice at all was the autopsy scene (yeah, that's about where the way things were going . . . But at least, for a second there, I mistakenly began to wonder if this thing were suddenly going to finally catch fire). This is no Animal House; it is no Caddy Shack; there is no moment anywhere here that rises to the level of Richard Dreyfuss crawling under a police car to wrap a chain around the rear axle.
It helps not, apparently, that director Hecklering (director who?) is no George Lucas (you know, the guy who calls himself "not a very good film-maker" and "not good with actors"), no John Landis, or no Harold Ramis, either. She is not even either half of the Coen Brothers. A treatment by any of the aforementioned would have almost certainly elevated the execution of this thing to the level of its otherwise incomprehensible hype.
The bottom line is, Cameron Crowe, the author of the original book who was also erroneously permitted to do the screenplay adaptation here, must be one of those writers who knows how to string words together with the greatest of fluidity without having hardly anything to say. Certainly, that was the case here. He is no Billy Wilder (about whom, ironically, he eventually wrote a book) or even an I. A. L. Diamond. And that so many people believe this movie says anything worth hearing is again a testament to how, now well into fat, hairy, balding, sagging middle age, certain people could find nothing wrong with voting for a sleaze-covered, slime-drenched, lying, cheating, and stealing, utterly incompetent and iconically irresponbsible megalomaniac real estate developer (don't they know that a "real estate developer" is just a crooked used car salesman with a much, much bigger line of credit?) for President of the United States. It's yet another testament to the moronocracy to which our once-mighty civilization has fallen, and out of respect to talented actors like Ray Walston, Sean Penn, or Forest Whitaker (however tiny his part here) as well as the cameramen and other unseen entirely competent production people signed on to make this in order to be able to meet their mortgage payments and other expense of daily living, I leave it with a consolation-prize-quality rating of five out of ten.