The Goods: Film Reviews
Yikes. For starters, you have a really rough, entirely predictable teen romantic comedy that wants to be fun like Animal House, but is just a chaotic mess. The romance portions are maybe passable, but if so, only barely. (I do like Lori Laughlin here.)
Where it nosedives into catastrophe is the other half of the film, where an entirely misguided romantic farce involving the teens’ parents is thrown into the mix. It’s baffling, but not in a fun way. Just a total misfire.
For whatever reason I am a total sucker for teen dramedies where supposedly platonic best friends have romantic sparks. I’m determined to watch every one of them.
This John Hughes-penned (but not -directed) example of the form is a pretty solid one, but one that stumbles over itself in the ending with some plot points and bits of dialogue that don’t make sense. Also Eric Stoltz is a total piece of plain white toast this entire movie. Flat and bland.
Nov 2020 update:
Rewatched to record for a podcast. There is exactly one great character/performance (Watts), then a bunch of clunkers. Enjoyable and very much up my alley, but still marred by some weird, head-scratching plot and character points in the third act.
The McDonald’s founding story segment generates almost all of the goodwill this movie earns. Keaton is also kind of fun if not very nuanced. The script is a catastrophe, though.
Major segments of this are racist and/or problematic.
BUT! I found this really funny and charming (albeit horny) teen comedy. Will Friedle has awesome comic chops. I love him as a lead. Jennifer Love-Hewitt is a smokeshow and has awesome chemistry with Friedle. I love “one epic night” type stories — it heightens and literalizes the teenage experience of everything seeming to happen at once.
(Plus romances where best friends end up falling in love is one of my favorite tropes, so I’m probably overrating this a little.)
The ultimate “blockbuster” movie for my money. Great cast, great premise, ultra-tight script where even the smallest details get a payoff down the line, a soaring score… There’s something exquisite watching all components of the movie-making process come together into a satisfying whole.
The cherry on top is that the precision and color of its contemporary details makes it feel like an inadvertent “period piece” — the movie just feels 1980s in its slang, fashion, and aesthetic.
One of my favorites.
One of Brad Bird’s and Pixar’s best films — and that’s saying something in both cases. The story of an unlikely chef with a great gift being the literal symbol of filth is mined for all its potent power, and the payoff of Anton Ego embracing the titular dish is one of my favorite moments in any movie. It has all the sense of danger and visual power to not let you forget that you’re in the perspective of a street-roaming pest. Masterpiece.