Grandview, U.S.A.

Plot synopsis:
Eighteen-year-old Tim Pearson, a soon-to-be graduate of Grandview High School, wants to go to Florida to study oceanography. Tim's father, Roger Pearson, loans Tim his brand new Cadillac to go to the Prom with his date Bonnie Clark. Later, while parked near a stream, Tim and Bonnie are making out in the Cadillac, when they feel the car moving, only to discover that the car is falling into the stream. Tim and Bonnie walk to "Cody's Speedway" to get a tow truck, Bonnie calls her father, who is so angry about the accident that he punches Tim. Mechanic Michelle "Mike" Cody comes to Tim's defense, and has Ernie "Slam" Webster, a local demolition derby driver, tow the car, taking Tim along. Slam stops at the bowling alley to see if his wife Candy had been there, but she wasn't.
The next morning, Tim goes to see his father at his office. He talks to Tim and hints to him that he does not want Tim to drive his car again. Tim runs into Mike and thanks her for helping him with the car.
Tim goes out to the Speedway, where he meets Mike's mentally challenged brother, Cowboy. Later on that night, Mike goes to the bar to see her uncle, Bob Cody, and asks if she can borrow $10,000, so she can fix up the Speedway. Bob doesn't have that kind of money, but wants to help her. Just then, they both hear a drunken Slam beating on a video game. Mike and Bob help Slam out to her truck. Mike and Slam talk about old times they had together.
Slam is at work the next morning, hungover, but his boss tells him to go home. Slam gets home and sees his wife Candy with another man, Donny. Enraged, he jumps on the lover's car demanding that Candy come back to him; in the ensuing struggle, Donny accidentally shoots himself in the foot. At the hospital, Candy declines to press charges, but refuses to come home with him.
That night, Mike sees Slam sleeping in his truck. Mike tries to comfort him, believing that he does not really love Candy, and is simply afraid of being alone. Later that day, Slam comes back and asks Mike if she wants to go out for dinner, but she tells him has to go to a County Commission meeting.
Tim and his dad go the same meeting, and Tim tells Roger that he wants to go to Florida; Roger is not too happy with his decision. At the Town Hall, Roger asks Tim to go to his office and get his Rolaids. In the office, Tim sees plans for the Speedway renovation on his dad's desk. At the meeting, Mike asks the commission for more time to come up with the money to fix up the Speedway, but the commission won't give it to her. Tim comes in and reveals what they have planned. He then gets into an argument with his father and leaves. He runs into Mike, who thanks him for saving her place. They both go for a hamburger at the local restaurant, and Mike invites Tim to her house, where they spend the night together. Mike asks Tim if he still wants to drive in the Derby, she gives him a car to drive. In the morning, Slam shows up at the door and discovers them in bed together; he leaves, upset.
Later on that day, Roger sees Tim near the stream, and says he is sorry about the fight. He asks Tim to give Illinois State University a chance, but Tim wants to go to Florida.
At the Speedway, Mike sells her old cars to make extra money; this upsets Cowboy, who runs off crying.
Slam goes to his house and sees his stuff on the lawn. Donny stands by the door and taunts Slam, telling him he called the cops. Slam gets his things and leaves.
Later that night, the Demolition Derby is going on, and Tim is in the race, competing against Slam. At the race's climax, Slam crashes into Tim. Mike is mad cause she thinks Slam did it on purpose, and tells him to leave the track.
Later that night, Candy and Donny are having sex in Slam's house when, suddenly, Slam appears on a bulldozer and knocks the walls down. The cops arrest Slam.
As Tim and Mike drive home from the hospital, they see firetrucks passing by, and discover that the Speedway has burned down. Mike asks her mother what had happened, and she says it just started up. In the morning, however, the police discover that the gas tank was unlocked. It is eventually revealed that Cowboy started the fire because Mike sold the old cars. Tim and Mike talk, and she admits she is in love with Slam.
Mike goes to bail Slam out from jail. He offers to help fix the Speedway, but Mike says she will sell the land to Roger Pearson; that way, they can afford to start a life together. Mike asks Slam for a favor.
Tim is on his way to Chicago, with his family in tow to say goodbye. The bus leaves and a car is driving by the side of the bus; it is Slam, who gives Tim the old car and money for his trip to Florida.

Tags: revenge

Review:
A great movie about life in a mid western town..
This movie is really great about life in a mid western town, a great cast in this movie.
A young soon to be high school grad,Tim Pearson,played by C.
Thomas Howell(The Outsiders, Red Dawn, and Soul Man)has his dreams.
Tim goes to Cody's Speed Way where they have demolition derbies there, he meets Michelle"Mike"Cody, played by Jamie Lee Curtis(Halloween, True Lies, and Freaky Friday).
Patrick Swayze(The Outsiders, Red Dawn, and Point Break) as Ernie"Slam"Webster, is awesome.
Ernie is a former boyfriend of Mike Cody, Ernie is married to Candy, played by Jennifer Jason-Leigh(Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Single White Female, and Rush), who is cheating on Ernie with a guy named Donny Vinton, played by 1950's heart throb Troy Donahue.
A love triangle goes on between Tim,Mike,and Slam.
Mike has her troubles too cause the county want to shut down the Speed Way, they feel her pace is unsafe, but the real estate man, Roger Pearson, played by Ramon Bieri, Tim's dad has plans for the site the Speed Way. Tim has a romantic night with Mike Cody,they start to be more close.
Slam has problems with his marriage and wants to get close to Mike.
The Speed Way gets burned down cause of Mike's little brother, nicknamed Cowboy, who like gum very much.
Mike and Slam start over together, Tim Pearson goes to Florida cause of Mike and Slam giving him his car.I think this movie is underrated and should have been giving a lot more credit.Grandview U.S.A. has a good supporting cast like Michael Winslow(The Police Academy movies, Spaceballs)as the announcer at the Speed Way.M. Emmet Walsh(Blade Runner, Back To School, and Missing In Action)as Bonnie's father.John Cusack(Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, and The Grifters)as Tim Pearson's friend,Johnny.
Joan Cusack as Johnny's sister.Carole Cook as Mike Cody's mother, Betty Welles.John Philbin(Children Of The Corn and Point Break)as Cowboy.I give this movie a 2 thumbs up and 10/10, I had the honor to see it filmed, I was staying with my aunt in Pontiac, Illinois, where the movie was filmed..
There have been more bad critical reviews and comments about THIS movie than good.
It contains an excellent blend of comedy and drama about life in a rural American location (no mention of state or town but Texas is a good possibility).
Observant touches and crazy-romantic characters more interesting than the plot.
Tender-but-tough divorcée, the struggling owner of an outdoor demolition derby arena in small town Illinois, is faced with a $10,000 upgrade from the county; one of the commissioners is trying to get her property cheap so he can build a country club on the spot, but is unaware his teenage son has a crush on the older woman, who is also being courted by her star-driver.
Surprisingly complicated character-driven film from director Randal Kleiser, he of the hits "Grease" and "The Blue Lagoon".
Working from Ken Hixon's mercurial script, Kleiser hands a wonderful role to top-billed Jamie Lee Curtis, who finally gets to show off an appealing range (it's one of her tightest performances).
Thomas Howell is still doing his puppy dog bit (soulful eyes and trembling bottom lip), however Patrick Swayze is terrific as the macho star involved in an all-out war with his cheating wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh, convincing as an unrepentant tramp).
Just as good as the younger players is Ramon Bieri as Howell's father; the under-appreciated actor stews in realistic exasperation with his kids, and Kleiser is careful not to mock him (the father's actions aren't fully considered, but we are able to perceive the man's character in Bieri's weary eyes and seasoned face).
What doesn't work are the dream sequences/music videos which appear to be included to appeal to the teen market.
It was filmed in my home town.
This movie is special to me because it was filmed in my home town of Pontiac,IL.
I was a little kid when they were filming it and I got to meet Jamie Lee. it was awesome.
In Pontiac,IL not much goes on, so you can only imagine how fun it was to have a movie with real stars being made there!
It's fun to watch this and look out for stuff that's there, not there and see some of my friends in little pieces of the film.
So if you are from or have ever been to Pontiac,IL I suggest you watch this film!!.
This is the first 1 I've ever given a movie at the IMDb. There are some true dogs in the wide world of cinema, and this one is king of the scrap heap.Unmoving setting, snore-worthy climax, angry married people sleeping around, choreographer Patrick Swayze sporting his usual Labrador retriever look; a sad-eyed Jamie Lee Curtis (believably, must say) reprises another unconventional woman with father issues; a couple of a-romantic love affairs with a heavy scene of pseudo BDSM, and people doing it in moving (!?) cars; and a ceaseless string of unfunny clichés about post-adolescence in the mid-80s, complete with silly spoofs on MTV (back when MTV actually played music videos.) Avoid.
But if you do indulge, look for the bad cameos of Michael Winslow as Spencer, Grandview's most visible Black man.
1 deep regret out of 10, but don't take my word for it; Jamie Lee reportedly said so, herself.
this might just be The Bad 80s Movie.
this might just be The Bad 80s Movie.
The cast is all the Usual Suspects: Patrick Swayze, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, etc.
OK, so some movies don't age as well as others, but I mean, come on!
Upon JLC's appearance, my first thought was that this must have been a 'rent' movie, early in her career.
She'd already had success with Halloween, Halloween II, and Trading Places!Viewing this film today, 20 years on, is more an exercise in humility than nostalgia..
Set in a small town in the mid-west,"Grandview USA" is neither the best nor the worst of the films to come along in the wake of "American Graffiti".Nothing much really happens,but C.
Thomas Howell's recurrent music video fantasies are entertaining,and the snippets of small-town America during the opening credits are fun.The little kid who's sharing her ice-cream cone with her dog was my favorite.A pleasant,unoffensive,little film..
I wanted to see this because of the presence of Jennifer Jason Leigh in the cast.
The others are not bad, but not extraordinary either: Jamie Lee Curtis, C.
Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze..
This is a strange movie and another spicy relationship from Kleiser coming back from Santorin.
That was indeed my feeling in my own hometown before leaving for the big city The movie takes a long time to get settled (while it's only 100 minutes), but it's worth staying because this coming of age story (a theme that has always resonates in me) is about a grad teen having a crush for Jamie Lee !
Sure her occupation is crazy (manager of stunt cars) but in her cowboy clothes or in the teen fantasies as a rock star, she is totally stunning and thus i was really connected with what's happening between them.
Swayze was solid as a poor hick unable to save his weeding while Jenny was a big disappointment : she thus plays her unfaithful wife but like the future Tralala from Red Hook, she is too much into teasing and nothing else As this small town is near Chicago, we have also as bonus, the locals siblings from the area, maybe in their 1st appearance as both sister and brother are still young !.
This is a troubling movie to review.
More good pass the time movie fare in the world of ordinary, although you do get caught up in the characters and their hardships, problems, aspirations, mistakes, etc.
It's well acted by all, and if you're a C Thomas Howell fan, like me, it's a plus, although like Soul Man, here, I didn't buy that Oceanography was his passion, a similar study to what the late Paul Walker did, him choosing marine biology.
Anyhow, he gets caught up in an affair with an older woman, the always capable and talented Jamie Lee Curtis.
Her best friend and ex lover (the late Swayze) a car derby driver who revels in his profession, is now going out with a trashy, but delicious looking sort (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in one of the film's standout and memorable performances) who's doing others, besides him.
The film has an average script, and less so plot, but one feels the movie is not built around that.
If you disregard that, and just live through the characters here, you'll come off okay, while a plus, is being a Christopher Howell fan.
Another asset is two dream sequences, one featuring Howell in a choreographed dancing number in front of a locomotive, surrounding by an entourage of beauties and studs, where the prize inside the carriage is Jamie Lee Curtis who I myself, has never found this horror icon, attractive.
Also an intimate lovemaking scene, on the derby ground, between the more mature Curtis and younger gent, Howell, in a brake locked car, which executes a perfect donut.
An enjoyable time passer with memorable moments, and characters, but don't look higher than that.
Here too, before Soul Man, Howell takes one in the gulliver..
This movie was a real waste of some good talent.
As I recall, it was a dud in the theaters, so I'd imagine after paying the talent, they lost money.The story is stupid & 1/2 way into it, you find yourself saying "who cares?" This movie has the same dumb storyline as the movie Roadhouse David vs Goliath.
Why should anyone care about trying to save a broken down demolition derby racetrack?...Mike (Jamie Lee) would be smart to sell it, take the money & run, thus saving us from the pain of watching her & the other losers from trying to save it.The only highlight is seeing Jamie Lee naked.It was filmed in a little one-horse town in central Illinois, I have been through there several times.
Even with a nice midwestern setting and a truly honest effort to make a film that most people could relate to on some level, this movie just comes up way short.
I just stopped caring about these characters about halfway in, and I spent the remainder of the film waiting for the predictable ending to take place.
It's not that this is a bad film, but I would call it generic, and it has a basic storyline that would be familiar to most movie-goers.
I'm quite certain that you can easily find a better film than this next time you're looking to kill some time with a movie..
If Small-town Midwestern Life is so Idyllic, Why are all the Kids Moving Elsewhere?.
People didn't revel in their small town status.
And pepper's considered pretty darn exotic.Jamie Lee used to show up at the bar I used to frequent after work, during the shoot.
First time I saw her I'd been in there about 10 minutes and a roadie walked in and she flashed her breasts at him and said, "How do you like these sets?"I suppose the movie does capture the grinding nothingness of it all.
I found the plot insipid and the acting pretty bad.
Surely you have something better to do than to watch this movie.
Trapped in someplace like Fairbury, IL they convince themselves that they love small town Americana.
This movie will be known for being the worst film made by many of these popular actors & actresses.
I lived near Pontiac IL for 12 years and after seeing the movie and recognizing places I went when I was growing up it was special.One question though if anyone knows Was the main house in the movie the funeral home in town?
thats where I lived and went to school thru 7th grade, my parents worked in Pontiac at the chair factory, then my mom worked at the hospital and my dad worked at the prison.We always thought that the track was near Fairbury but I guess not is there any place where this movie can be rented I have check Block Buster and they don't have it i think its one of those hard to find movies.
In first watching Grandview, USA, you might be puzzled by the scattered storytelling.
Simply put, the movie concerns a few small town Illinois residents, but each with their own assorted, and somewhat separate, small town struggles.
C Thomas Howell, at least in the trailers, is made to look like the main character of the story, the teenager just aching to break free of the provincial setting.
Jamie Lee Curtis is Mike Cody, a speedway owner who is fighting to hold on to her property.
And, Patrick Swayze plays "Slam the Ram," a rather cumbersome character who plays a speedway driver on Cody's lot who is dealing with his sleazy wife (Jennifer Jason Leigh) cheating on him.
The entire story is, as said before, simply scattered and without focus.Jamie Lee Curis and Patrick Swayze, however, are no less entertaining despite this.
If only they had developed their characters and story enough, you might have had quite an enjoyable little film.
For me, it was still an entertaining film, so long as you don't mind obscure movies and you're in the mood for something different.
C Thomas Howell's teenage angst can be kind of annoying at points, especially the music video daydream sequence with the 'Steele Man of Action' bit.
Look for John Philbin (as one of the speedway employees), John Cusack and Joan Cusack (as C Thomas Howell's friends) in minor parts.
Lighthearted teen drama, directed by Randal Kleiser, fresh from "Grease" and "Blue Lagoon" box office hits, which like "Footloose" it was set in rural America, in this case a Midwestern small-town called Grandview, features a cast of the 80's 'usual suspects' in this particular genre such as Jamie Lee Curtis, C.Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, John & Joan Cusack, John Philbin and Jennifer Jason Leigh, among others.The movie surely looks good and perfectly fits in the 80's visuals and the general tone, with that appealing 'small town vibe'; a bit cheesy in parts with over-the-top characters and campy acting & dialogue delivering, pumped with an emblematic 80's rock /pop soundtrack, performed by Air Supply, Jack Mack and the Heart Attack, Eddie & the Tide or The Pointer Sisters and even with some staged musical numbers MTV style in Howell's dream sequences, choreographed by the star Patrick Swayze and his wife Lisa Niemi, on the other hand the weak part is the way the story was written and presented to the screen, which seriously lacks focus with a myriad of sub-plots among the characters which turned the main plot, whatever it was, into a sub-plot itself.18 years old's high school graduate, Tim Pearson (Howell) lives in Grandview and wants to leave the small town to go to Florida to be an oceanographer, against his father's will; 27 years old's and divorced tomboy, Michelle 'Mike' Cody (Jamie Lee Curtis), which owns a Speedrome after her father died of a heart attack, fights to retain it open against Tim's dad, Roger Pearson (Ramon Bieri), who wants to buy the land to built a golf course & a wealthy resort and Ernie 'Slam' Webster (Patrick Swayze), a speed racer in Cody's circuit, a frustrated husband of the shameless and unfaithful, Candy Webster (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who's having an affair with the way older & sleazy salesman, Donny Vinton (Troy Donahue).
"Slam" and "Mike" always had a crush on each other, although they have never dated, but when "Slam" finally leaves Candy, after a physical confront with her wife's lover and tries to pursuit his happiness alongside "Mike", it may be too late, because his former crush is starting to feel the hots for the much younger Tim...If the plot's summary sounds like a 'teen soap opera", it's because is close to being it, but after all it's a Randal Kleiser flick and his own style of being cheerful, dreamy, mawkishly sentimental and corny, it's once again, very patent here.Jamie Lee Curtis, in all of her sexiness, leads "Grandview U.S.A." in her second adult role, following the success in the previous year of "Trading Places", trying to distance herself from being typecast in another horror / slasher film as the iconic "Scream Queen" in service; C.
Thomas Howell, still a bit green in his acting and Patrick Swayze, in a thankless role, both still fresh from their work as the brothers Curtis in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Outsiders", reunite here in the same year that they also performed together in the John Milius' cult-movie, "Red Dawn".The supporting cast is full of familiar faces: from the 50's heartthrob, Troy Donahue, which performed his sleazy role so 'hammy' that almost looks like a parody, to the "Police Academy" Sgt. Jones', Michael Winslow and the Cusack brothers (even if you blink, you will miss Joan's tiny part on screen); John Philbin, who surprisingly delivers a good performance as the mentally retarded "Cowboy", and the character actors Ramon Bieri, M.
Emmet Walsh & the always great, William Windom.The sex / nude scenes between Jamie Lee and C.
Thomas Howell look a bit awkward and odd, not only because the age difference is noticeable (Howell looks like a callow kid next to a matured Jamie), but also that he was underage during principal photography, i don't know how it passed through the censors, maybe it was one the mysteries from that decade, whatever it happened during the 80's, it stayed in the 80's...In short, "Grandview U.S.A." is a movie aimed to the devoted fans of 80's teen movies, which love this genre and can truly appreciate it, even when they aren't that good like in this particular case, for the general viewers, it's better skip this one and go rent / buy something else.