Valley Girl (1983, Martha Coolidge) (Patreon)

54/100

Not a particularly good film, by any conventional yardstick, but easy to harbor affection for nonetheless. I skipped it in '83 because (a) who's Nicolas Cage?* and (b) it seemed to threaten a tsunami of "grody" and "tubular" and "ohhh my gawwwd!" and the rest of the vocab/uptalk that we'd all learned from Moon Zappa the year before. Early scenes focusing on Julie and her friends do indeed coast heavily on comic Valspeak, but the real problem, for me, is geographical: The other girls' loathing for Randy and Fred and everything they represent seems so abstract as to be meaningless. Coolidge sticks Romeo & Juliet on a movie-theater marquee to make sure that nobody will miss the ostensible model, but there's a sizable difference between "feuding families, much bloodshed" and generic, neighborhood-based xenophobia; I just never bought that this form of peer pressure would exist, much less that it would temporarily work. Perhaps that's because the screenplay keeps drifting into completely unrelated subplots—I rather liked the "Stacy's Mom" interlude featuring Suzi's mom (who makes a Graduate reference that doesn't quote Mrs. Robinson!), but what it's doing in this movie I couldn't begin to tell you. Same goes for Loryn and Tommy, which plays like an outtake from Fast Times (which is to say, it's more serious than this fluffier comedy can handle) and bizarrely balks on what seems like its follow-through (when Loryn starts trying to tell Julie what happened—we assume—and then just...doesn't). The movie as a whole feels no less half-assed than Fred's "big plan" to get Randy and Julie back together, which amounts to "take Randy where Julie is" (but still beats the hell out of Randy's plan, which requires him to get hired for multiple minimum-wage jobs and wait for Julie to show up as a customer, so that he can then make knowing, goofy faces at her).

Casting a legendary talent in his first lead role compensates for a lot, however. This isn't among Cage's great performances—he wasn't yet confident enough (or foolhardy enough) to risk sabotaging the intended tone, as he'd so memorably do a few years later in Peggy Sue Got Married, and mostly sticks to the formulaic script. But Coolidge clearly understands what she's got, to some degree, and provides him with opportunities to go a little gonzo (most notably when Randy hides in the shower, observing various partying kids while waiting for Julie to show up; it's his fledgling effort at silent-era expressionism) while also allowing him to pour all of the movie's romance into intense, soulful gazes. Again, that Randy never even remotely resembles the Hollywood slickster for whom he's supposed to be mistaken by Stacey and Co. (as opposed to Cameron Dye's Fred, who fits that stereotype to a T; Dye's pretty terrific, too, bit surprising that his career never quite took off) kinda neuters the narrative. He's fun to watch, though. So are Colleen Camp and Frederic Forrest as Julie's folks, even if the recovering-hippies aspect (which was then in the process of being increasingly ignored by Family Ties, thanks to Michael J. Fox's breakout) never really goes anywhere. Oddly, Michelle Meyrink, who'd be aggressively amusing two years later in Coolidge's Real Genius, never comes alive as Suzi, getting upstaged by Lee Purcell as her very direct mom; Elizabeth Daily's typically adorable, though, and Heidi Holicker, stuck with the designated scold, finds a character during the brief stretch when Stacey's being pursued by Fred. (My single favorite moment in the entire film: During a sincere conversation between Julie and Randy, in the car, Fred's faintly heard offscreen saying "My darling!" in an affected posh voice, to which Stacey faintly yell-replies "You're so weird!" That's the sort of offhand touch that can make you loyal to a director.) And, clumsy as it frequently is, the whole thing's held together by a first-rate New Wave soundtrack that introduces Randy with Felony's "The Fanatic," gives onscreen showcases to the Plimsouls and Josie Cotton,** and finds room for one of my favorite little-remembered '80s cuts, "She Talks in Stereo." But if you're gonna construct an entire montage around "I Melt With You," for fuck's sake do something special with the "hmm hmm hmm" breakdown.

Also I spent the entire movie wondering why Tommy seemed creepy well above and beyond the character's superficial smarminess, and only learned afterwards that I recognized Michael Bowen from his much more recent role as Jack "Made Up His Mind Ten Minutes Ago" Welker on Breaking Bad. That's quite an upgrade.

* Consequently, my introduction to Cage wound up being Birdy, a film I saw solely because Peter Gabriel composed its score and I was obsessed with him (along with all things Genesis) at the time. Thanks, Peter. Sorry I lost all interest in you after So.

** Got curious about contemporary discourse re: "Johnny, Are You Queer?" It seems...complicated. I do think Cotton's backup singers here doing a limp-wrist gesture was probably not the best idea, even if it's meant satirically.