Unfortunately this was a movie made for my generation, and unlike a fine wine which may get better with age, this was more like an old can of "New Coke" that has only degraded even further with time. After having sat through the torturous experience in 1985 and paying for the original privilege of watching this abomination back in the good old days, I thought I would revisit it in the year of our lord 2014 to see if time and experience had sharpened my insight and appreciation of this pretentious stink bomb. Sorry but the answer is now as it was then "no".
It was painfully, self-absorbed tripe then and is even more difficult to watch now. Kind of like your friend reminding you years later about how you made a schmuck of yourself at a party years ago.
Forget about explaining the plot, it's virtually non-existent and more or less just contrived motifs to showcase forced bad acting and interactions that are supposed to be meaningful and poignant but are really just forced shallow overacting.
Previous generations had Bogart, Brando, Dean, Newman, and McQueen. Sadly my generation had...these people.
In all fairness the blame can't be laid entirely at the feet of this group of too much stardom, too soon brat packers; most of them were still in their early twenties and to give them the benefit of the doubt, may have still been learning their craft even though they were being paid handsomely for the lessons. Much of the blame should probably also go to the two writers and the director; two of whom were Joel Schumacher. The intention here appears to mostly have been about exploiting these seven young rising stars in a bad forced combination similar to watching a terrible 80's musical super group. Bad musical synth pop overlays, also very 80's, filling the scenes out also didn't help.
Do real people really behave in such shallow, self-indulgent, and boring histrionics? No, not really. If you've ever gone to Times Square NYC and stood next to a cardboard cutout of a celebrity, then you get the gist of this ensemble of predictable now very dated 80's stereotypes; the hypocritical career climber politico (Judd Nelson), the self-destructive, emotionally vacant, druggie (both Lowe and Moore), the overage, good girl, virgin (something out of the '40's), and on and on.
If buckets of forced crying, laughing, pathos, yelling, etc., but nothing emotionally substantial for the viewer to identify with in any real way is your cup of tea then this may be your type of film. Believe it or not at the time I worked with a guy who loved this movie. I couldn't even muster a comeback to that statement beyond "Really?!!".
Whenever I may get nostalgic for the 80's I need only channel this movie to cure myself of that. Hard to watch in the original, almost painfully masochistic to watch now. Glad to see that many of these people, including Joel Schumacher, went on to do much better work than this, but hey, the studio was paying and the rest was on the house.
It was painfully, self-absorbed tripe then and is even more difficult to watch now. Kind of like your friend reminding you years later about how you made a schmuck of yourself at a party years ago.
Forget about explaining the plot, it's virtually non-existent and more or less just contrived motifs to showcase forced bad acting and interactions that are supposed to be meaningful and poignant but are really just forced shallow overacting.
Previous generations had Bogart, Brando, Dean, Newman, and McQueen. Sadly my generation had...these people.
In all fairness the blame can't be laid entirely at the feet of this group of too much stardom, too soon brat packers; most of them were still in their early twenties and to give them the benefit of the doubt, may have still been learning their craft even though they were being paid handsomely for the lessons. Much of the blame should probably also go to the two writers and the director; two of whom were Joel Schumacher. The intention here appears to mostly have been about exploiting these seven young rising stars in a bad forced combination similar to watching a terrible 80's musical super group. Bad musical synth pop overlays, also very 80's, filling the scenes out also didn't help.
Do real people really behave in such shallow, self-indulgent, and boring histrionics? No, not really. If you've ever gone to Times Square NYC and stood next to a cardboard cutout of a celebrity, then you get the gist of this ensemble of predictable now very dated 80's stereotypes; the hypocritical career climber politico (Judd Nelson), the self-destructive, emotionally vacant, druggie (both Lowe and Moore), the overage, good girl, virgin (something out of the '40's), and on and on.
If buckets of forced crying, laughing, pathos, yelling, etc., but nothing emotionally substantial for the viewer to identify with in any real way is your cup of tea then this may be your type of film. Believe it or not at the time I worked with a guy who loved this movie. I couldn't even muster a comeback to that statement beyond "Really?!!".
Whenever I may get nostalgic for the 80's I need only channel this movie to cure myself of that. Hard to watch in the original, almost painfully masochistic to watch now. Glad to see that many of these people, including Joel Schumacher, went on to do much better work than this, but hey, the studio was paying and the rest was on the house.