By Richard Winters
My Rating: 4 out of 10
4-Word Review: Two teens live together.
This review is brought to you by request from ‘somebody’ who also requested that I review Times Square and Uncle Buck, which I will do in the preceding weeks. This one though, while starring several up-and-coming young stars is strangely obscure as the only place to find it streaming is on YouTube and while it does have a DVD issue it’s not on Blu-ray and even more shockingly is not listed in Leonard Maltin’s Movie Listings.
The story revolves around Natalie (Jennifer Connelly) who is left alone for a period of time while her father (Micheal Zaslow) is away on business. While he’s gone she allows her friend Jeff (Byron Thames) to move in since he’s having issues with his stepfather (Marshall Bell). Natalie though is not into him romantically as she’s got a crush on James (Alan Casey) that Natalie’s friend Polly (Maddie Corman) is also into. Polly is initially upset when James goes after Natalie instead of her, but she gets over that when she meets Zoo (Billy Wirth) a male model and professional baseball player. She even flies all the way out to New York in order to hook-up with him during a baseball series that he is playing there.
On one hand this has a lot of pleasing elements. It’s different from most 80’s teen flicks in that it’s not vulgar, or raucous. The main character isn’t some mindless, sex starved teen who immediately jumps into the sack with Jeff when he moves in, which is nice. She doesn’t even let a cute guy kiss her, who she is into, when she meets him during aa trip to Washington D.C. She’s quite sensible, as are her friends for the most part, and these characters come-off more like young adults in the making than cartoonish caricatures of out-of-control party animals with no limits like in most other adolescent films from that era.
On the flip side the adults didn’t seem too believable. Her father leaving a teen alone for what seems to be weeks and never bothers to call, or check-in on her seemed hard to fathom. Jeff’s parents behaved in an equally confounding way. They just let him run off and make only feeble attempts to try and ‘win’ him back, but I would think they’d become more assertive when they realized he was living with another teen of the opposite sex unchaperoned, which could presumably lead to unwanted pregnancy, so since he’s under 18, and he certainly looks like he is (he was in fact 15 when this was shot), they’d have the right to demand he come back, or get the authorities involved versus just sitting back and acting like they’re helpless to do much of anything.
I thought Polly’s ‘romance’ with Zoo was a bit off too. For one thing he’s supposedly an adult playing in the major leagues, so hooking up with a teen would be inappropriate. Yes, he does ‘ask her’ if she’s 18 and she does say that she is, but she looks much, much younger (she was 14 when it was filmed), so he should’ve known that she was lying. Of course, maybe he did and didn’t care, but that should’ve been confirmed either way.
The segment though where Polly gets arrested while at the ball game and is hauled away by the cops only to have Bill (Terry Kinney), the team photographer, intervene by pretending to know her to keep her out of trouble is when this thing really jumps-the-shark. If he had some perverse underlying motives, like he wanted to force himself on her sexually when he brought her back to his place, which certainly wouldn’t be good, but at least make some sense, I might’ve understood it, but instead that’s not the case. He brings her to his apartment and then insists she call her parents while allowing her to stay their temporarily, but why do this? What’s in it for him? Does he do this same thing for everybody when he sees them getting arrested? This could also prove to be dangerous for him as well. What’s to say she wouldn’t vandalize his place, or sneak in and steal his credit cards, or money out of his wallet when he’s asleep? Why would anybody want to take such a risk for somebody that they didn’t know? If he had been a teen counselor working with runways/delinquents then it might’ve worked, but the way the scenario gets portrayed here is just downright wacky.
I did like though that the film does bring out an underlying jealousy that Polly has towards Natalie and this causes her to become vindictive. Most other teen movies don’t do it this way. If there’s a ‘mean girl’ involved she’s already the enemy at the beginning, but in reality, friendships, even close ones, can have their share of rivalries and can become strained especially at that age. So, the movie scores on that level, but then ruins it by having them instantaneously become chums again when they bump into each other at the airport without any scene showing them talking through their feelings, which should’ve been necessary.
Connelly is terrific and I enjoyed the moments where she imagines herself as an adult character inside an old ‘B’ movie as well as the scene where she fantasizes of slapping the Vice President across the face, but it gets confusing who the main protagonist is supposed to be. Corman, as Polly, gets almost as much screen time and in certain ways goes through more of a change.
In either case I didn’t find any of to be very involving. The fall scenery is pleasant, and teens are inoffensive, but the storyline is too serene. There was potential for a lot more drama and comedy and the scenarios should’ve been played up more. It starts out cute but becomes increasingly more benign as it goes and completely flat lines by the third act.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: May 9, 1986
Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Director: Linda Feferman
Studio: Warner Brothers
Available: DVD, YouTube
Scopophilia 