Alright movie comrades,
Mark has tasked me with reviewing last weeks movie selection, which has come to be known as the film that dictated all of his adolescent life decisions. I am greatly honored that he would place such responsibility in my hands. For me it is the sole equivalent to critiquing his life as we know it.
That being said I’ll start off by declaring that One Crazy Summer was my personal favorite in the John Cusack filmography and I had never seen this installment until last Thursday’s viewing. But all personal biases aside Ithoroughly enjoyed Better Off Dead, which did draw some of the same parallels to my favorite mentioned above. That feat obviously wasn’t hard to do since they share the same lead actor and director combo.
Some of my strong and enjoyable takeaways were obviously Johnny, the pre-teen mob gangster that has a hold on the neighborhood paper business. For god’s sake don’t mess with his money or he will haunt your life and dreams. I also thoroughly enjoyed the comedic tones of the foreign exchange/abduction love affair played out between Monique, Ricky, and his mother Mrs. Smith. In real life this is a tragic tale of someone being held against there will and forced into an arranged marriage that only results in traumatic rape on a nightly basis, but in the magic of an 80’s rom-com its entertainment. Speaking of Mrs. Smith I would like to take this time to say that I thoroughly enjoyed her huge weird boner inducing chesticles.
The Japanese Howard Cosell was a solid running gag as well. Also I got to hear some Hall & Oates briefly on the radio as the radio was being tuned in one of the car scenes. And I’ll save the best for last in giving credit to John Cusack, who simply has a great comedic timing to pretty much all of his lines. My favorite being when he offers Ricky some condolences for his mother’s untimely facial burning incident “Gee, I’m sorry your mother blew up, Ricky!”.
Overall great pick last week Billy D.
This weeks honors go to Mark. See you all on Thursday.
My Attempt To Be As Cool As Mark:
- According to Wikipedia one of the “simulated” drug uses by the character Charles De Mar was him inhaling nitrous-oxide from a whipped cream can. I totally missed this during the viewing because if I would’ve seen it then “Drug Use” would’ve definitely been checked off on my bingo board because unlike him snorting Jell-O and snow, this is actually a pretty common drug use called whippets, not to be confused with Whippet which is a medium-sized English hound.
- The movie has an 82% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes yet Siskel & Ebert gave it two thumbs down… HATERS!!!
- I couldn’t find the budget but apparently the movie made over $10 million at the box office
- The Last American Virgin was Diane Franklins (Monique Junet) credited film debut
-Qaadir
I would like to give a shout to the little brother, Badger. He had zero lines in this film but still somehow managed to say it all through his actions.
Better Off Dead is a 1985 American surrealist teen black comedy film starring John Cusack and written and directed by Savage Steve Holland. It tells the story of high school student Lane Myer who is suicidal after his girlfriend breaks up with him shortly before Christmas.
While the film was not a commercial or critical success at the time of its release, it has since been regarded as a cult classic.[1]
source : wikipedia
