They were the movies that everyone just “had” to see. Not necessarily the creme de la creme, to quote my good friend who taught me French in grade school — Mr. Pepe le Pew — but shows that if you didn’t see them, you were basically left out of every conversation for months on end. Possibly years. Although that could have been your breath.
Red onions. The bane of your existence.
So these movies would hit the screen and everyone would rush out to plunk down some hard earned dough, and rave about how “totally tubular” they were.
Time would pass, and you’d and say, “Boy it’s been years since I saw (enter any movie starring Matthew Modine here),” only to find that the once fine cinema was actually a skunk in cat’s clothing. Sorry Pepe, but you and your kind stink. You always have.
And you always will.
“Footloose” (1984) — The esteemed Kevin Bacon (who was my mother’s father’s uncle’s nephew’s girlfriend’s best friend’s college sweetheart for the record) takes center stage in the summer hit while Chris Penn fits into the role of his hillbilly sidekick with two left feet like pair of Tony Lamas on Travis Tritt. The timeless Bacon, who was reportedly in his early 50s when he shot this high school toe tapper, must overcome a ban on dancing in a hick town that makes Kent look like London. Bac’s performance is passable but the plot is about as likely as John Lithgow (who plays the Rev. Shaw Moore and leads the ban on all things fun in town) growing an upper lip. Speaking of ludicrous, one of the signature scenes of the movie showcases a beer drinking, cigarette smoking Bacon listening to a cruddy boom box whose tunes magically follow him as he runs, flips and twists through an empty warehouse like Baryshnikov after an all-night bender. I mean c’mon now, after a few brews and smokes, no one — outside of Keith Richards — is up for that kind of exercise. Speaking of music, Kenny Loggins really cut loose with the title track “Footloose,” a song so bad and so horribly wrong it had me longing for the days of hearing Irene Cara’s “What a Feeling” ad nauseum during the “Flashdance” craze in the early ‘80s. Leg warmers and all.
“Top Gun” (1986) — A movie that had young starry eyed men enlisting in the U.S. Navy faster than Maverick can pull a flyby was good brainless fun, but “Top Gun” ultimately shoots blanks. I can only guess at the arguments that ensued over which new recruits got to be named Iceman, Goose, Viper, Jester and so on. The movie was a testosterone feast on a homo-erotic plate — what with young hunks Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards and John Stockwell greased up and sweaty — playing volleyball until the sun goes down. Hmm. Am I the only one who thought (and possibly hoped) Maverick and Ice were going kiss in the locker room when they get all up in each other’s grills (as the kids like to say) about who’s the better pilot? Oh, there’s Kelly McGillis and some sub par “Righteous Brothers” karaoke in there, too. And even a tragic death, but mostly it’s Cruise turning on the Hollywood charm for the camera — trying to shake his old man’s shadow while treating a $30 million F-14 Tomcat like his personal toy. Worse yet, I don’t think I went 50 yards that summer without hearing “Danger Zone.” There are 16 lines to this song, if you don’t count Kenny Loggins screeching “Highway to the Danger Zone… Right into the Danger Zone” for the remaining five minutes of the song. Brutal. Goose got off easy.
“Speed” (1994) — It was a toss up between this one and “Point Break” (1991), but Keanu Reeves’ performance as Special Agent Johnny Utah in the latter was so unintentionally comedic the show is still fine cinema. Fine cinema indeed. In “Speed,” Reeves’ portrayal of Officer Jack Traven is about as bland as a 3-day-old bowl of milk-soaked Cocoa Puffs as Sandra Bullock gives forth a worthy performance — for Sandra Bullock, that is. And while she is likable as Annie Porter, her performance is overshadowed by that of one of America’s worst actors, pound for pound, Dennis Hopper.
Hopper hasn’t given audiences a solid showing since 1979 when he played a whacked out photojournalist in “Apocalypse Now.” The role doesn’t seem to matter, the plot doesn’t seem to matter, Hopper’s stoner, California boy acting style always hazes its way to the surface. So you’ve got him as Howard Payne facing off with Traven and Det. Harry Temple (played by Jeff Daniels, who shone as Harry Dunne in “Dumb and Dumber” in ‘94 but hasn’t done much since) as a bus with a bomb on it speeds through L.A. at over 50 mph. Fifty mph in L.A. during rush hour? They wouldn’t have gotten half a block. Oh, there’s the painfully obvious impending hookup between Reeves and Bullock, some crunched cars and explosion or 10 but ultimately “Speed” is about as thrilling and suspenseful as traffic on State Route 305 and twice as slow. I laughed. I cried. I napped. Good times.
