Secret Admirer

Or "Do you have any Brie?"

Screen Time: (6)- he's practically omnipresent. it's a good thing.
Woundage: (4)- hm. not much. people throw stuff at him, and he crashes a van.

Aesthetics: (8)- whoa baby. where do I get me one of these?

I had seen a little snippet of this film on Comedy Central's Mastercheese Theatre about a year and a half ago, and all we could do was make fun of it. But I must have missed the parts with Ricardo in them, or else I think the Geoffrey Blake Worship Page would have started a lot sooner. But I'm getting to that.

In order to rent a movie in my dismal little college town when one does not have a car, one must walk about half a mile up the road to Advanced Video. I personally have never minded the walk, especially since I was half in love with one of the guys who worked there (he actually called up the company when I asked him if they had The War At Home and he couldn't find it). So I put on my coat, grabbed my newly obtained Advanced Video membership card, and set out to rent the cheesiest of cheesy 80s movies.

When I got to Advanced Video, there were no cars in the parking lot. I thought this was a little weird, seeing as it was Friday night. And then I saw the big sign on the door, saying "We're sorry for the inconvenience, but Advanced Video has been forced out of business by national chains..." My evening was officially ruined. But I still wanted to see Secret Admirer. Then I remembered the other video place up the road another mile and a half or so. So I went there. On foot.

Once I got to the new video place, I had to apply for a membership card. "Do you have a driver's license?" the scrawny little pimply-faced clerk asked me in his rude little weaselly voice. (Well, I don't, but that is a very long story as if this wasn't already.) "No," I told him. "But I do have a college ID, a major credit card, an ATM card, a blood donor card, a birth certificate, a Social Security card, a Starbucks coffee club card, and a membership card from the video store down the street that your stupid national chain forced out of business." He seemed to accept this, and then asked for my school and home addresses, my ID number, my date of birth, my height and weight, my school and home phone numbers, my favorite Beatle, whether I preferred my peanut butter creamy or crunchy, and why the hell I was paying money to rent a film like Secret Admirer. After signing 42 seperate pieces of paper, I was finally permitted to pay my two bucks to rent Secret Admirer and I left the store with my precious cargo in tow. But that's not the end of the story. See, I still had to walk the two miles back to campus, and I had worn my very sexiest platform shoes in hopes that I would see the guy who worked in the now-defunct Advanced Video. Plus, I haven't even gotten to the point where I actually watch the movie.

After all that, I'm sure you can imagine that I had very high expectations for this film, even though I knew damn well that it was an 80s film, and a pretty bad 80s film at that. In the end, I'm pretty sure I would have been mad at myself for renting it had Blake not made a stellar appearance.

About ten minutes into the movie, the protagonist(C. Thomas Howell)'s friends make their appearance. The last one out of their van is a guy in a 3-piece suit and fedora. ("Oh, look," observed Jenna. "They take their pet travelling salesman with them everywhere they go.") It's not till they all get inside the house that you realize that's Geoffrey Blake. Then you get to know the character. He's not the typical 80s movie teenager. He wears suits and cool hats, he carries a briefcase (which, we find out later, contains martini glasses), he reads Playboy for the articles, and in the climactic party scene, he's got a parakeet on his shoulder. In short, he kicks ass.

The plot itself- an anonymous love letter causing all sorts of confusion among teenagers and their parents- is a really dumb idea. Plus it has some very confusing scenes that I guess must have been funny in 1985, but we spent a good deal of time uttering the same three words over and over- "What the f*ck." Some of the scenes were so cliched that we started beating ourselves over the head with couch cushions. Then there's the fact that this film seems to be condoning all sorts of vices. Jenna and I counted Grand Theft Auto, adultery, petty theft, reading other people's mail, underage drinking, child abandonment, domestic violence, voyeurism, vandalism, and solving one's problems through violence and agression. Not to mention (spoiler warning, though you really don't need to bother watching the movie) that in the end, the Girl The Protagonist Is Meant To Be With All Along(TM) (played by Lori Loughlin of "Full House") gives up an academic opportunity to be with her new boyfriend. And we all know that the relationship didn't last very long- only as long as it took her to realize that her true soul mate was John Stamos.

All in all, I have to say that basically, this movie bit the big one. However, certain parts of this movie (particularly the scene where Geoff crashes the van and the part in the Dancing Burger, when he sports a Duran Duran hairstyle and catches flying burgers without looking) are not to be missed. I will, no doubt, be posting some excellent screengrabs of this as soon as I get to the lab. There is one nice thing about the new video store- the movie's not back till Wednesday, which should give me plenty of time to get that done.