BEFORE: Something for Valentine's Day - another 80's classic that "everyone" has seen but me...
We spent our Valentine's Day chipping the ice out of our driveway, then having take-out from Taco Bell and watching "Destroyed in Seconds". This was done to avoid the restaurant crowds, and we'll try to get out for a fancy romantic dinner in a few days.
THE PLOT: A noble underachiever and a beautiful valedictorian fall in love the summer before she goes off to college.
AFTER: I had thought that the title referred to the need to express one's love, how Lloyd Dobler needed to say something, anything, to win a girl's heart. But actually I think it refers to his girlfriend's relationship with her father (John Mahoney). They have the type of honest relationship where they can say anything to each other, but the movie suggests, in a roundabout way, that maybe in this case honesty isn't the best policy. Does a father really need to know the intimate details of his daughter's romance? Why would he even want to?
The movie takes a strange left turn when the IRS shows up to investigate the father's nursing home - it seems like an odd element to have in a romantic comedy. It points out how connected Diane (Ione Skye) is to her father, and how un-connected she is to the rest of her high-school class. I guess Lloyd is too young to recognize a girl with serious daddy issues - I don't really understand why the father's legal problems preclude Diane having a relationship with Lloyd. Unless Diane is so simplistic that there's only room for one man in her life, either her father or Lloyd but not both, which is a problem. Lloyd therefore has no chance of a relationship with her until she rejects her father, but that's still not an ideal situation, since she's never been independent, and is only defined by her relationship with these two men.
Most people remember and talk about the famous scene with John Cusack holding up the boombox, blasting "In Your Eyes" to get his girlfriend's attention. Honestly, there wasn't a whole lot to the movie, for me, outside of this scene. I'm trying to figure out if I hate romantic comedies, or if I'm just out of touch with them.
Also starring Lili Taylor and Joan Cusack (of course...), with cameos by Eric Stoltz, Bebe Neuwirth, Jeremy Piven, and Philip Baker Hall.
RATING: 5 out of 10 songs about Joe
Are you still sticking to only movies you haven't seen before? I cannot believe you haven't seen Say Anything before. I once had planned on seeing every movie John Cusack made, but then I watched Tapeheads.
ReplyDeleteI'd seen pieces of it before, but not the whole thing. And I'd certainly read enough about the boombox scene over the years - but I wasn't aware of how it fit in with the rest of the film (or rather, didn't fit in...)
ReplyDeleteI do occasionally watch a movie I've seen, either by accident, or if I really need a refresher on it - but I'm trying to limit this to no more than 2 or 3 times a year.
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