Best of the '80s teen flicks

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2005)

I love this movie. It's a teen movie but it's not sugar-coated. It's realistic and a little bit gritty with memorable characters. You have all your stereotypical high school characters (the popular girl, the geek, the jock, the bad boy, and the weird girl), but you eventually find out that there's more to them than their labels. The popular girl's parents are bitterly divorced and her mother's an alcoholic, the geek is under enormous pressure to get good grades from his parents, the bad boy has an abusive and neglectful father and (expectantly) does badly at school, the jock is under enormous pressure to be tough and do good at sports from his father, and the weird girl's parents ignore her. They see that all have similar problems and are more alike than they first thought. They come out of the school building more open-minded. A miracle has just occurred: five high school kids who normally wouldn't give each other the time of day have become friends. This movie is unusual in that has a powerful message that teens can relate to. It's a reminder of a lost era when teen movies had substance and weren't presented as a stereotypical product of the teen movie machine, horrible scripts and all. I hope someday that era can be brought back.