Ok, I have a SERIOUS confession to make. I'm lucky, I know you can keep a secret, you won't tell anyone, right? Ok, here it is... I.... really... REALLY.... get nostalgic for the 80s. Maybe it's just because I was still under 4' when it ended, and I look back and wonder what I would have been like if I was a teen in the 80s. Chances are, I'd be a lot older. :)
All of this isn't to say that there wasn't an abnormally LARGE amount of stupid crap during the 80s, I know there was. First of all, there were the clothes. What the HELL were you all thinking? Seriously. Ugh.
There was some good music, and a lot of crappy music too. That's what's great about retrospectives though, I can completely ignore the garbage and only listen to the good stuff. :)
High tech seriously sucked, as evidenced by all the ideas of what technology could do, seen through the movies. Think of any 80s movie that has computers in it, and compare that to what really happened with computers. Ugh. Life without the modern internet would kill me. I used to play with BBS boards a lot, back in the 80s, but having experienced the joys of HTML, I can never go back.
Ok, it sounds like I'm really ripping away on the decade I professed undying love for a few sentences back. Dammit. Let me start over.... I would have loved to be a teen in the 80s. One of my favorite sites (
http://www.x-entertainment.com/ please check it out) is dedicated to the 80s. I love the movies especially, and that's what I really wanted to talk about.
I decided to sit down and actually start watching some of them all the way through. Why? I have an empty Netflix queue, and that's the kind of thing you do when you have an empty queue. :)
I picked only movies with names I recognized (if I haven't heard of it, it's not getting reviewed), and tried (with one exception) to stick to fulfill my childhood ambition to be an 80s teen by only watching teen movies. Yarg. Like a pirate.
So, without further delay, here it is....
The Breakfast Club: I admit, this is the first time I've seen this movie the whole way through. It's tough to look at this movie without my 2007 eyes, I'm trying to remember the impact it would have had in the 80s. It's a decent movie, I guess, but it reminds me a lot of Seinfeld. Why? It seems to be a movie about absolutely nothing. I don't know what I can really say more than that, you either have already seen this, or you haven't.
St. Elmo's Fire: Damn, this is another one I've heard about a lot, but never seen. It was ok, I guess. Could have been better, could have been worse. The music was great (especially the instrumental pieces), the plot was so-so, and the actors were... pretty typical. It was nice to see Demi Moore be someone who isn't perfect for once. Other than that... eh, whatever, I guess.
Short Circuit: I buried this one in the middle for a reason. See, I know this movie is crap, and isn't even technically a "teen" movie. The part of me that wants you to believe I have journalistic integrity says I should tell you how bad this movie is. But I can't, I really can't. The part of me that was a kid in the 80s, that had this as the first movie I ever owned, that memorized this movie front to back, and that used to think I could even build a robot like that if I just spent the time, tells me that if I even begin to trash on this movie it will throw itself on the floor and scream at the top of its lungs. Sorry, I can't say anything else about it, really...
Pretty In Pink: Damn, I'm really striking out here. Although I could always watch James Spader being an ass, he's so good at it. The story? Dunno, I really quit paying attention, and instead decided to spend that time using my PSP to find open wifi spots that I could glom onto with my laptop. Oh, I think Annie Potts (Jeanine from Ghostbusters) is in this somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure... I really like the song though, so maybe I should give this movie another chance sometime, if just to hear the song again...
I know I missed a lot of great movies, I only did four, but hey, if you don't like it get your own blog and write about movies yourself. Ha! I still love the 80s, and nothing will change that. Deal with it!
EDIT: Ok, I finally watched Pretty In Pink all the way through (and paid attention), and I retract everything I said before. Someone needs to be seriously punished for the ending of this movie. If I didn't have to return the disk, I'd probably use it for trap-shooting. My revised opinion: skip the movie, just buy the soundtrack and stare at a picture of James Spader for an hour and a half. It'd be much more interesting.
