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Released in 1991, this movie mashes up John Hughes' favorite 1980s themes as a writer/director (romance and pride leading a loneliheart to challenge the high school caste system) and his favorite 1990s themes as a producer (tranquil Midwestia being defended by a loveable naif against threats from oiley outsiders).
It's built around what should be a can't-miss premise --- a Walter Mitty-type fantasy-dreaming nebbish trapped overnight in a department store with a beautiful woman. And it misses big. It misses like a multi-year Vince Coleman contract. I don't usually give my qualitative assessment of a film in the first post of a film thread, but there it is. Tell me I'm wrong.
I rented this a few weeks ago, curious as to how such a thing could miss, and I painfully suspect that news of my renting filtered back to Hughes and caused his heart attack.
What goes on is what happens when a guy like Hughes becomes a brand and he just goes from set piece to contrivance to set piece to contrivance in the name of advancing his brand, but doesn't really have any idea what he's doing.
The protagonist (Frank Whaley) is the skinny fast-talking bullshitter that would have been played by Anthony Michael Hall had AMH not bulked up and started playing bullies. And he's more or less fine. He and his would-be rich bitch paramour (Jennifer Connolly) are 21, but still stuck in town living out the traumas of their youth --- his hard-working family that doesn't truck with dreamers, her brutal father that doesn't accept that his money can't buy away the alienation that the rich and beautiful and motherless girl is heir to.
I don't know. I'm giving this way too much thought. It sucked. The "department store" is actually a new midwestern discount chain at the time called Target, and you get to see a lot of shit that they don't sell anymore, looking like a cross between Woolworth's and K-Mart. That's got an unintentional appeal, I guess. Time capsule appeal.
The oily bohunks are played with slackjawed annoyingness by Dermot Mulroney and his brother Kieran. In fact, when our love-destined couple first meet the thugs, they accidentally knock them cold, and then seemingly inexplicably run away rather than tying them up or taking their guns or calling the police. But the purpose becomes clear, as their hiding becomes opportunities to put them together in sexually provocative positions.
Jennifer Connolly is just continually degraded over-and-over throughout this whole thing. The film has sort of become legendary in that sense. Even those who've never seen it (and they are many) understand from the subtext of poster and the video box to be saying, "This film is a delivery system for Jennifer Connolly's bosomliness."
So, anyhow, like I said, curiosity of the "How can this miss?" sort led me to rent, and now I know. But not before I had the mortifying experience of poking around the video racks in search of it and hearing Ms. Edgy approach Smelly Crusty Video Clerk-Guy to inquire after it, and to draw the response, "Oh sure, I remember that film. That one really featured Jennifer Connolly's assets."
Yuck, Smelly Crusty Video Clerk-Guy! Get away from my wife! Down what cursed alley of depravity has my curiosity led me?!
Maybe John Hughes has to answer iin the hereafter for making this one, and maybe I have to answer for renting it. But here's something, and it speaks to Some Kind of Wonderful also --- what's with naming films after songs that don't appear in the film? And really don't even share the themes of the film. Seriously, what's up with that? it's some misleading shit.
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