These memories are often evoked by the popular media. The best of them capture the spirit and innocence of the times. For instance, I feel that The Bad News Bears is the best portrait of my ge-ge-generation (sorry) in the 70's. It isn't the greatest movie of the decade, but come on! That's how we looked, how we talked, how we dressed. No period-film recreation of the 70's is so successful as this example of the real McCoy.
Of mainstream 80's films, the best "Gen-X" portrait is undoubtedly Better Off Dead, the debut and career highlight of director Savage Steve Holland. This isn't just another empty-headed sex farce, nor is it a vacuous fashion parade. This is about the simple elemental struggle for Lane Myer (John Cusack) to stay alive in a world where it's sometimes better to be dead (hence the title, Sherlock).
Like many of the Abrahams-Zucker films of the decade (Airplane!, Top Secret, The Naked Gun), this one has many surrealistic touches, including a pair of animated sequences. Unlike those other films, however, the surrealism here is not limited to mere sight-gags. Here, they define an entire world, strange but real, where paperboys are terrorists, where a Japanese immigrant speaks like Howard Cosell, where students genuinely laugh at a teacher's erudite and unfunny jokes.
The plot involves a nebbishy high-school student, a breakup with a girlfriend, four suicide attempts, a sexy French exchange-student, and dozens of quirky detours. Somehow, it ends up (disappointingly) in a ski race. The outcome is easy to predict.
The joy of this movie, however, are the many great lines I remember being marked on my mind the first time I saw it. "Buck up, little camper." "I've been going to this high-school for seven and a half years. I'm no dummy." The car race scenes. The paperboy chase scenes. Not everything works: a subplot involving a genius brother goes nowhere. A "slovenly mailman" visual gag is completely gratuitous. But who can complain after the "Frankenstein Hamburger" scene?
John Cusack is appealing in the lead. He is purity personified, but with a zany streak threatening to jump out. Imagine a prep-school Gene Wilder. Curtis Armstrong (best remembered from "Moonlighting") is very funny as Cusack's slacker friend. He gets the best lines: jokes that are so silly that most actors would sound idiotic spouting them off, but which Armstrong manages to work. Based on his performance here, he could make a sensational straight-man if he ever found a worthy partner.
Most of the remaining cast is at least adequate, Kim Darby less so as an incompetent Stepford Mom. The performances of David Ogden Stiers and Vincent Schiavelli are more rewarding.
The best teenager film from the eighties is either this one or Fast Times at Ridgemont High, depending on one's taste. If you like a rougher, more realistic view, watch Fast Times. If you want a gentler, surrealist vision, watch Better Off Dead: better in that respect than the more-famous Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Three-and-a-Half stars
Copyright 1997 by Dale G. Abersold
