After a regrettably long hiatus due variously to employment, unemployment, my Scotch blog, a bad case of pneumonia, the daunting task of reviewing thousands of films, and general lack of new '80s fare on Comcast, Netflix, etc., I am back with three major movies no one can dispute are icons of '80s pop culture: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, Over the Top, and Say Anything.
Say Anything (1989) is now something of a classic, but growing up it had a strange reputation as half chick-flick and half guy-flick. Really, you can sort of say that about any of Cameron Crowe's better movies - they exist in a kind of real space that defies easy explanation, but has both a tender side and a rougher one.
Starring John Cusack at the very apex of his early career (and easily my favorite role of his entire catalog), Ione Skye as one of the most authentic teenage girls in screen history, and John Mahoney as one of the more believable screen fathers, this movie has fantastic casting both large and small, front to back. Everybody acts like a real human being, which is as much a testament to the great screenplay as well as the actors.
The plot revolves around the relationship between Diane, the class valedictorian, considered generally untouchable/unreachable/undatable by her peers (Skye) and Lloyd, a popular outsider/budding kickboxer/all-around good guy. Complicating the picture is Diane's father James (Mahoney), a retirement home administrator who has a very clear picture of where he sees his daughter's future going, and that picture does not include Lloyd Dobler.
Lloyd himself really has no idea what he wants for himself - like the vast majority of graduating 18 year olds after high school - and his great speech about "not wanting to buy anything sold or processed, process anything bought or sold, or sell anything bought... or processed..." is a definite highlight. He is more or less content to be an uncle (his in-film sister is his real sister Joan Cusack), to do his sparring, and to hang around with like-minded friends. The film does a good job showing how Lloyd and Diane expand and enrich each others lives.
This is so ... real. The '80s had a nice subculture of teen films that pushed fairly realistic behavior even as the slasher films and sex comedies pushed ridiculous behavior and plastic characterizations to the utmost limit. Particularly noteworthy among these realistic teen movies are are the films of John Hughes (Some Kind of Wonderful, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, and so on), Cameron Crowe, and a few well known titles like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and One Crazy Summer.
Movies like this are basically long gone, but at least Say Anything is still shown on TV with some regularity. Filled with great dialog ("I gave her my heart... and she gave me a pen") and characters (the small town guys drinking behind the Gas N Sip was particularly close to home) and iconic moments (the boombox playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" is the one that everybody knows), it's worth seeing more than once.
Over the Top (1987) was a favorite of mine as a kid for good reason - a completely insane journey through the world of competitive arm wrestling, the story involves long-haul trucker Lincoln Hawk (what a name! played by Sylvester Stallone) trying to win the affection and eventually custody of his son Michael (playing well by child actor David Mendenhall).
This movie was basically tailor-made for kids like me in the late '80s - Giant trucks ramming things! Trucks jury rigged with weight lifting equipment! Super macho arm wrestling under extremely sweaty adrenalized conditions! A dad who is a hero destroying mountain-sized competitors named Bull! A grandfather who is rich and showers the kid with gifts including a sweet truck! It's a kid's secret fascist fantasy world of violence and testosterone and idealized parental roles.
The director was the late Menahem Golan. When I first saw the name in the credits, it rang several bells, so I took a quick sojourn over to IMDB and discovered he directed the worst adaptation of Crime and Punishment I had ever seen, back in 2002, featuring a dreadfully miscast Crispin Glover.
Digging deeper, I saw he also directed 1986's The Delta Force with Chuck Norris (1986), which is a passable/decent action movie, the intriguing 1989 curio Mack the Knife (with Raul Julia and Richard Harris), 1984's charming Over the Brooklyn Bridge (Elliott Gould, Margaux Hemingway, Sid Caesar), and 1981's Enter the Ninja, a cult classic with legendary status among my peers back in elementary school in the '80s. We would trade the worn VHS back and forth in secret bus-seat back-alley deals, and watch in the middle of the night, worshipping the soft glow of the midnight television.
The plot is pretty straightforward - Michael is a kid around age 10 or so, and in military school. When school gets out he's forced to go home via giant truck with his father Lincoln Hawk, who he's meeting for the first time. Hawk is a long haul trucker with a busy sideline competing in arm wrestling competitions in various rest stops and diners, and with an eye on the upcoming world arm wrestling competition in Las Vegas.
As Michael and his father journey across the west, they get to know each other and form a nice father/son bond. However, in the central conflict of the film Michael's maternal grandfather wants custody of him - for no obvious reason except that he has control issues (he tends to scream "I'VE GOT TO HAVE THAT BOY" and things like that).
There is a very funny episode of How Did This Get Made? about Over the Top, and if you've seen the movie you really should invest the time in the podcast, which skewers all the notoriously stupid elements of the movie, including gems like:
-The insane weight lifting apparatus Hawk has installed in his truck so he can work out while he drives,
-When Hawk encourages his 10 year old son to take this multi-ton truck down a major road despite not knowing how to drive.
-How highly televised the Arm Wrestling Championships are, including dominating all the TVs at the airport (!).
-The complete lack of motivation or history for Hawk's major life decisions.
This is definitely a movie that could only exist in the '80s.
Finally, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is easily one of the most surreal movies I've encountered for this blog (or anywhere else for that matter). It's essentially a psychedelic dance attack with two loose plot threads - first, our heroes (a crew of breakdancers) must stop the destruction of their community rec center. To do so they must enlist the help of the rival crew of breakdancers - by defeating them in repeated neon-soaked dance-offs, of course - and the help of the upper crust rich parents of one of the newest dancers.
This movie may not be a feast for the mind, but it IS a feast for the eyes and ears. There are some really wild scenes that should be seen at least once, even if you have to YouTube them - like a rail-thin Ice-T (as "Radiotron Rapper") dressed in studded spiked leather performing a song in a colorful tech noir nightclub. Or Turbo (Michael Chambers) dancing across the walls and ceiling of his room in a fantasy sequence. They apparently borrowed the "revolving room" set from A Nightmare on Elm Street, filmed earlier in the year, and put it to ingenious use.
Another must-see-to-believe sequence has the two crews breakdance fighting to a song called "Combat" also performed by Ice-T. Or the hallucinogenic hospital dance number, where rap and breakdancing literally resurrect the dead. Or ... the list goes on and on. Great choreography by Adrian Dightam.
This may not be Singing in the Rain, but it is creative and fun and bright. However, I include the strong caveat that you should only watch this movie if (A) you LOVE DANCING and (B) you LOVE THE '80s. Both conditions must be met, or you will be turned off by this.
Long before I ever saw this, I knew that the term "Electric Boogaloo" referred to an unwanted sequel. It may be hampered with braindead plotting and paper thin characters, but it also has some interesting early rap and other electronic music and some truly strange and athletic dancing. It all takes place amid the brightest day-glo t-shirts you have ever seen. They will seriously burn your retinas.
The director of Breakin' 2 was Sam Firstenberg, who also directed Revenge of the Ninja, Ninja III, American Ninja 1 & 2... well, you get the idea.
These three movies had varying success. Say Anything cost $16 million to make, and brought back a modest profit by grossing $20 million. I'm sure it's made a lot more in video rentals and sales over the years, but I'm a little surprised it didn't do better during its theater run.
Over the Top, meanwhile, did not do well - sadly, the arm wrestling community did not turn out in force to support the movie: it cost $25 million to make (!) and only returned $16 million.
Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo is a little bit of a mystery: various sources indicate it made about $15 million in the theater, but I can't find how much it cost. I'll hazard a guess that it made its money back.
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