This ’80s coming-of-age tale, while thoroughly entertaining, is a movie of somewhat lost or unrealized opportunities. Unlike other 80s teen movies, this one lacks substance or really any admirable characters. Julie’s (the female protagonist) ex-hippie parents are the closest thing to ‘role models’ because they want their daughter to make her own decisions uninfluenced by social pressures.
It’s your typical “boy meets girl” movie plot, but more along the lines of a disjointed Romeo & Juliet. The movie starts with the Julie and her close friends at the mall (the mall was the old Sherman Oaks Galleria for those who recall that long gone Icon to 80’s retail therapy), shopping. Then Julie breaks up with her egotistical boyfriend, Tommy, on the escalators as she’s exiting the mall. Julie seems almost cruel when she breaks up with him. The break seems to mean nothing to her, and even less to her friends.
The girls head to the beach, where Julie first encounters Randy, the hot, hunky Hollywood boy.
Julie later actually meets Randy when he crashes a Valley party, after eyeing him at the beach. While Julie is chatting up Randy, her “friend” Loren is upstairs, having sex with Julie’s ex of a few mere hours, Tommy. (Where is the girl code here?) Randy and Fred get tossed out by Tommy and his mini-pals, only to crawl through a bathroom window and wait for Julie to enter. (WHAT?!?!) He convinces her to meet him outside, and she brings her uptight friend Stacy to entertain his friend Fred.
After a few dates with Randy, Julie’s friends all start to heavily pressure her to go back to Tommy. And she eventually complies, albeit reluctantly. She then has to break up with Randy, which again, she does with very little feeling. Randy promptly gets a good drunk on, has sex in a “grody” club bathroom with an ex girlfriend, and then resolves to get Julie back. He follows her and Tommy on a few dates, then infiltrates her prom, with sidekick Fred. He basically kidnaps a very willing Julie, who by then, has made it plenty evident she’s not into Tommy. It ends with Randy and Julie, riding off in a limo, rented by Tommy. By this time, we also have to wonder why the better guy even likes Julie?
The best part of this movie was the verbiage. Phrases like “Barf me out,” “Gag me with a spoon,” “Like, fer sure,” and “That stuff tastes like Clorox” are forever ingrained in history as “Valley Speak.”
As someone who grew up in the Valley, this is one movie that really didn’t hold up all that well, I’m truly sad to say. As much as I loved the verbiage, it wasn’t as outwardly obvious as they made it. The characters are lackluster, and shallow. The plot is a little contrived. But similarities aside, Romeo and Juliet this is not.
On re-watching it, I was left more than a little disappointed. That feels like there were huge gaps in the filmmaking process, as if some crucial explanatory sequence was left on the cutting room floor. On the plus side, Foreman and Cage manage to realistically portray the excitement of young lovers who can barely tear themselves away from each other. In fact, a young Nicholas Cage is the very best part of this movie.
As much as I loved this movie in the 80s, I’m a little less enthralled by it now. “Like, fer sure.”
Tami Danielson is the main in-house blogger and Director of Operations for Pop-Daze. She was raised in California and Florida and currently resides in Oregon. Tami has written for a variety of periodicals and has provided digital marketing services for a number of artists. She can be reached at [email protected]
