Valley Girl: 2020
I have a soft spot in my heart for the teen coming-of-age films of the 80s. These were the films that had enough romantic-ish stuff to appease girls and still enough crude humor to appease a teenage guy. They were the right movies for early stage dates, particularly when shown on HBO in somebody's basement.
They hit that sweet spot in the middle of the immature raunch of Porky's the gooey schlock of Endless Love and the rawer, slicker sexuality of Risky Business.
I know they're not great movies, but I retain an emotional attachment to Fast Times at Ridgemont High (very much so, it's probably forever in my Top 10), Last American Virgin, Private School, and of course Valley Girl.
I've probably watched Valley Girl 25 or 30 times. It used to come on HBO or Showtime or one of those in the early days night after night after night. I was a kid. I adored Deborah Foreman (Julie), thought Suzi was hot and her mom even hotter. (*sidebar, your honor. Suzi's mom retained her relative hotness longer than the rest of the cast. I'd probably still smack it today.) I even knew a girl who fit the Loryn role (and looked a little like her) and who got used in a similar way.
The music was great. Melt With You by Modern English still holds up even after all this time. One of the best uses of a song not meant for a movie IN a movie in cinematic history.
SOOOO.... It was with no small amount of trepidation that I accepted the challenge from my girls, who were looking for some mental cotton candy to pass the time, to watch this new version. They've steadfastly refused to watch the original Valley Girl because they felt like I sold them a bill of goods when I forced them to watch Fast Times (in their terms, a movie about teenage sex, drugs and abortion), but this new version appealed to them because they recognized some of the cast members (from YouTube I think, hell, I don't know) and because they know I liked the lead -- Jessica Rothe who was in Happy Death Day.
I should have passed. They found it to be moderately charming fluff. It kicked me in my 80s nuts.
Problems:
1) It's a musical. Yes the songs are 80s semi-classics and the selection was great, but they dropped in and out of them with the cast (which can't really sing all that well) doing them. They mixed them with out-of-place dance routines that seemed lifted directly from High School Musical.
2) It took the original story and re-told it, twisted it around, made it something it kinda, sorta wasn't. And then they added in some idiotic codas -- the kind that worked fantastically well in Fast Times and in Animal House, but that just fell with a cringy thud here.
3) They way the story was re-told was through a mother-daughter conversation where the grown up Julie (played by a slumming Alicia Silverstone) used the story of her whirlwind romance with Randy to explain to her now teenaged daughter how cool she used to be. That contrivance was clunky and didn't feel authentic.
4) Hideous casting. Rothe was good in Death Day, but I didn't get much out of her here. She's 33 years old, playing 17 and it flopped. The guy that took Nicholas Cage's part (girls liked him, but I found him completely wrong). Hey, let's add in a chunky lesbian, too! Because that was such a thing in 1982.
5) Most of the cast from the orginal made cameos and good googly they looked bad. One who didn't cameo, the one who will make ANY movie for a plate of grapes and $3.80, the one who could have made this sad urination on nostalgia bearable, Nicholas Cage, did not appear.
It was just a bad idea, poorly cast, poorly executed and (in my case) poorly received. I'm going to try to forget that I ever saw it and just hang on to the original.
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