On our latest edition of oh my god has it really been that long since that came out, we have “Risky Business.” It was just released in a 25th Anniversary standard and Blu-Ray DVD edition with a bunch of special features many of us have been waiting years for. I can remember watching the trailer for this movie in a movie theater so many years ago and that Porsche crashing in the lake. I even remember watching it with my brother (part of it anyway) when it was first out on VHS (our parents were not home). Watching it freaked me out actually, and I couldn’t believe a lot of the things going on. It seemed cruel what Lana was doing to Joel Goodson. Then again, I was 8 or 9 when I saw this, so what did I know about call girls? Not a whole lot, but that was probably just as well.
Years later, I was able to actually understand what was going on in “Risky Business,” and it remains one of my favorite Tom Cruise movies. The amazing thing about this movie being as old as it now is, it is actually timeless when you look at the themes. Parents overly encouraging their kids to retake the SAT’s and wanting them to get into the best schools, the excitement of having the family home all to yourself, taking out your dad’s car which you could never hope to be insured to drive as a teenager, none of this ever gets old. The movie was made in the age of capitalism, and that age is still with us while it is enduring some nasty speed bumps (the stock market crashing). It was “The Graduate” for the 80’s generation, and I think it’s safe to say that it will has the same staying power as that movie. Roger Ebert has gone out of his way to compare this movie to “The Graduate.” Can you blame him?
The movie is a teen comedy, but it actually has a much more serious tone to it. This is made clear as we open up from the view of being on a train overlooking Chicago. All this is done to the score of Tangerine Dream, and this is one of my all time favorite scores ever. I never get sick of listening to it ever. We see Joel talking about this dream he has of when he goes over to the neighbor’s house to find a woman taking a shower. Joel of course goes over to her, but like all great wet dreams, it ends just when you get to first base. Joel’s dream suddenly takes him to a classroom where everyone is taking their college boards, and he is three hours late. This gets at his fear of everything going wrong with his future and of never getting into college, but the movie will have him going through a very real version of Murphy’s Law where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.
The thing about the comedy in this movie is that it doesn’t come out of jokes, but out of situations and the way people act around one another. Some of these things you need to laugh at because they would be too painful otherwise. Joel seems to have the most trusting parents on the planet, especially when you consider the fact that his dad doesn’t even bother to hide the keys to his Porsche. Believe me, I would have loved to have driven my dad’s Infiniti when he was away, but the keys were nowhere to be found (he obviously saw this movie before I did). Before they go, his parents advise their teenage son to use his best judgment because he knows they trust him. The trust lasts through most of the movie, and it leads later on to one of my all time favorite movie quotes:
“It seems to me that if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word.”
Of course, Joel goes off the wall as soon as his parents are gone filling his glass with Chivas Regal whiskey and adds a little coke to it (I wouldn’t have the nerve to mix my drink the way he does). This leads to one of the all time classic scenes where Cruise dances in his shirt and underwear and lip syncs to “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger. Don’t tell me you have never ever done this yourself! I have more than I care to admit, except I usually had my pants or shorts on. But that is harmless compared to what happens next.
When his friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) ends up setting Joel up with Jackie whose ad he finds in a local paper. Before Joel has a chance to call Jackie back to say that it was a joke, Miles (a prick of a friend) eats up the number. Damn! All this happening in a movie made long before the advent of caller ID! Of course, if Joel’s parents had Caller ID, then there wouldn’t have been a movie. Jackie ends up coming around, and it turns out she is really a he. Jackie however does give her the number for Lana whom she describes as what every white guy from the lake wants. From there on out, things really do get risky.
“Risky Business” is really a great movie about the loss of innocence, and how things will never be the same again for Joel. There is a great scene where as Joel is having sex with Lana (Rebecca De Mornay), the camera pans across the wall to reveal pictures of Joel as a baby and as a child. This is the Joel of the past, and he ain’t coming back. The Joel of the future is gonna have to grow up a lot more quickly to the real world he is about to enter. When he finds that he owes Lana $300 for their night together, he has to go to the bank and cash out a bond. It’s a sad moment that he knows he will never escape from. By the end of the movie, when Joel is reunited with his parents, there is a trust between them that is forever broken. The world becomes a lonely place for Joel, and he comes to realize that he won’t be able to tell his parents anything and everything (at least, not for a long time).
It is also a look at a generation that is first introduced to a world of greed and capitalism that they want to be a part of without really realizing or maybe even caring about the consequences. There’s one scene where Joel and his friends are talking about how a friend of theirs just got into Harvard, and of how much an MBA makes after they graduate. Joel at one point asks everyone if they care about making money or if they really care about doing good. Everyone pretty much says they are all about money, and they chide Joel for sarcastically going in the opposite direction. This is still going on today with kids doing overtime to get the best scores possible on those college exams which are less about your intelligence than they are about how well you take tests. The pressure parents put on their kids to get into the best schools possible is never ending, and its like parents are pimping out their kids to show how theirs is better. We have gone from dueling banjos to dueling SAT’s!
But what I really loved about “Risky Business” is how it never ever condescends to its characters. Most other teen comedies did that at the time, and it drove me nuts after a while. Kids are not always as dumb as we like to make them out to be. They can be smarter than us adults sometimes (scary thought actually), and they get in trouble not so much out of stupidity as much as boredom. To challenge this nice image everyone has of you is always tempting whether you’re a kid, a teenager, or even an adult. To break out from the norm is usually a necessity when things become too routine and boring to be special anymore. I love it when movies treat teenagers like people instead of just clichéd idiots.
But yeah, let’s not forget that this movie is indeed a comedy. There are moments that are as funny as they are horrifying. The scene where Joel desperately tries to keep his dad’s Porsche from going into Lake Michigan always gets to me. Usually, situations like this end with the car getting smashed in some accident, so give the filmmakers some credit for giving us something more original. That Joel ends up turning the family home into a brothel is ridiculously funny. You have to wonder if the neighbors had any idea of what was going on. It almost seems impossible that Joel can get away with this completely, especially with Bill Rutherford (John Masur), the man doing his interview for Princeton, coming in during the festivities. Also, you have to get a kick out of the absurdity of the situation Joel and his friends are in:
“I’ve got a trig midterm tomorrow and I’m being chased by Guido the killer pimp!”
Like I said, you need to laugh at a lot of this stuff because we were lucky to escape from our teenage years in one piece. Looking at this movie now, not a whole lot has changed. Kids today are directionless and are entering an increasingly shallow and corrupt world after graduation. What we are taught to believe in is almost rendered completely useless as the real world comes at us in its unrelenting fashion.
While “Top Gun” shot Tom Cruise into the stratosphere of stardom, “Risky Business” was the movie that made him a star. And that’s not just because we got to see him dancing around the living room in his underwear. There is no one else who could have played this role as well as he does here. Tom gives us a seemingly innocent kid dealing with conflicting emotions and fears, and he has great moments where he shows this without saying a word. I know I say that a lot in my reviews, of how people do the best acting with their face and no dialogue, but Tom’s performance here is a great example of that. By the end of the movie, he succeeds in taking Joel Goodson from an innocent kid to a stronger if corrupted young man with the world ahead of him.
Rebecca DeMornay is also great as Lana and shows her at times to be as tough as steel while at the same time showing her vulnerabilities. In her eyes, you can see a very sad person. You are never sure whether or not you can fully trust her, but you cannot resist being around her even if she can be very bad for you. And like everything else in this movie, she compliments the music score by Tangerine Dream very well. This movie got her career off to a great start.
Speaking of that, this movie got a lot of careers up and running as well as it did Tom’s and Rebecca’s. It’s hard to believe that this is one of Joe Pantoliano’s very first movies, and he plays Lana’s pimp, Guido. Joe is at times tough and intimidating, and there are other great moments where he humorously offers to sell Joel Goodson his life back. What other movies can you think of where you see someone so excited to sell furniture back to its intended owner?
The Blu-Ray disc of the 25th Anniversary edition features the audio/video commentary with writer/director Marshall Brickman, Tom Cruise who almost never does commentaries, and “Righteous Kill” hack… Ahem, excuse me, director Jon Avnet. Don’t get too excited though, there is no couch jumping by any pf the participants let alone Tom Cruise. There is also the requisite documentary on the making of the movie with all its participants looking back on the movie years later. This one is very good and it also features some other perspectives on it from Amy Heckerling, Cameron Crowe, and film critic Peter Travers among others. We also get to see the original screen tests with Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay. The movie itself looks great in Blu-Ray regardless of the grain that you see here and there. That seems to be the case with a lot of older movies when they go to Blu-Ray.
Many people can’t stand Tom Cruise today (I’m not sure I can either to be honest), but that doesn’t take away from his work in “Risky Business” which remains one of the great teen comedies (let alone teen movies) ever made. Catching up with it again was worth it, and I appreciated it a lot more now than when I was eight years old. Things have changed a little since then.
Ok mom and dad, I’ll go to my room, but my brother said I could watch it!
**** out of ****
Years later, I was able to actually understand what was going on in “Risky Business,” and it remains one of my favorite Tom Cruise movies. The amazing thing about this movie being as old as it now is, it is actually timeless when you look at the themes. Parents overly encouraging their kids to retake the SAT’s and wanting them to get into the best schools, the excitement of having the family home all to yourself, taking out your dad’s car which you could never hope to be insured to drive as a teenager, none of this ever gets old. The movie was made in the age of capitalism, and that age is still with us while it is enduring some nasty speed bumps (the stock market crashing). It was “The Graduate” for the 80’s generation, and I think it’s safe to say that it will has the same staying power as that movie. Roger Ebert has gone out of his way to compare this movie to “The Graduate.” Can you blame him?
The movie is a teen comedy, but it actually has a much more serious tone to it. This is made clear as we open up from the view of being on a train overlooking Chicago. All this is done to the score of Tangerine Dream, and this is one of my all time favorite scores ever. I never get sick of listening to it ever. We see Joel talking about this dream he has of when he goes over to the neighbor’s house to find a woman taking a shower. Joel of course goes over to her, but like all great wet dreams, it ends just when you get to first base. Joel’s dream suddenly takes him to a classroom where everyone is taking their college boards, and he is three hours late. This gets at his fear of everything going wrong with his future and of never getting into college, but the movie will have him going through a very real version of Murphy’s Law where everything that can go wrong does go wrong.
The thing about the comedy in this movie is that it doesn’t come out of jokes, but out of situations and the way people act around one another. Some of these things you need to laugh at because they would be too painful otherwise. Joel seems to have the most trusting parents on the planet, especially when you consider the fact that his dad doesn’t even bother to hide the keys to his Porsche. Believe me, I would have loved to have driven my dad’s Infiniti when he was away, but the keys were nowhere to be found (he obviously saw this movie before I did). Before they go, his parents advise their teenage son to use his best judgment because he knows they trust him. The trust lasts through most of the movie, and it leads later on to one of my all time favorite movie quotes:
“It seems to me that if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word.”
Of course, Joel goes off the wall as soon as his parents are gone filling his glass with Chivas Regal whiskey and adds a little coke to it (I wouldn’t have the nerve to mix my drink the way he does). This leads to one of the all time classic scenes where Cruise dances in his shirt and underwear and lip syncs to “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger. Don’t tell me you have never ever done this yourself! I have more than I care to admit, except I usually had my pants or shorts on. But that is harmless compared to what happens next.
When his friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) ends up setting Joel up with Jackie whose ad he finds in a local paper. Before Joel has a chance to call Jackie back to say that it was a joke, Miles (a prick of a friend) eats up the number. Damn! All this happening in a movie made long before the advent of caller ID! Of course, if Joel’s parents had Caller ID, then there wouldn’t have been a movie. Jackie ends up coming around, and it turns out she is really a he. Jackie however does give her the number for Lana whom she describes as what every white guy from the lake wants. From there on out, things really do get risky.
“Risky Business” is really a great movie about the loss of innocence, and how things will never be the same again for Joel. There is a great scene where as Joel is having sex with Lana (Rebecca De Mornay), the camera pans across the wall to reveal pictures of Joel as a baby and as a child. This is the Joel of the past, and he ain’t coming back. The Joel of the future is gonna have to grow up a lot more quickly to the real world he is about to enter. When he finds that he owes Lana $300 for their night together, he has to go to the bank and cash out a bond. It’s a sad moment that he knows he will never escape from. By the end of the movie, when Joel is reunited with his parents, there is a trust between them that is forever broken. The world becomes a lonely place for Joel, and he comes to realize that he won’t be able to tell his parents anything and everything (at least, not for a long time).
It is also a look at a generation that is first introduced to a world of greed and capitalism that they want to be a part of without really realizing or maybe even caring about the consequences. There’s one scene where Joel and his friends are talking about how a friend of theirs just got into Harvard, and of how much an MBA makes after they graduate. Joel at one point asks everyone if they care about making money or if they really care about doing good. Everyone pretty much says they are all about money, and they chide Joel for sarcastically going in the opposite direction. This is still going on today with kids doing overtime to get the best scores possible on those college exams which are less about your intelligence than they are about how well you take tests. The pressure parents put on their kids to get into the best schools possible is never ending, and its like parents are pimping out their kids to show how theirs is better. We have gone from dueling banjos to dueling SAT’s!
But what I really loved about “Risky Business” is how it never ever condescends to its characters. Most other teen comedies did that at the time, and it drove me nuts after a while. Kids are not always as dumb as we like to make them out to be. They can be smarter than us adults sometimes (scary thought actually), and they get in trouble not so much out of stupidity as much as boredom. To challenge this nice image everyone has of you is always tempting whether you’re a kid, a teenager, or even an adult. To break out from the norm is usually a necessity when things become too routine and boring to be special anymore. I love it when movies treat teenagers like people instead of just clichéd idiots.
But yeah, let’s not forget that this movie is indeed a comedy. There are moments that are as funny as they are horrifying. The scene where Joel desperately tries to keep his dad’s Porsche from going into Lake Michigan always gets to me. Usually, situations like this end with the car getting smashed in some accident, so give the filmmakers some credit for giving us something more original. That Joel ends up turning the family home into a brothel is ridiculously funny. You have to wonder if the neighbors had any idea of what was going on. It almost seems impossible that Joel can get away with this completely, especially with Bill Rutherford (John Masur), the man doing his interview for Princeton, coming in during the festivities. Also, you have to get a kick out of the absurdity of the situation Joel and his friends are in:
“I’ve got a trig midterm tomorrow and I’m being chased by Guido the killer pimp!”
Like I said, you need to laugh at a lot of this stuff because we were lucky to escape from our teenage years in one piece. Looking at this movie now, not a whole lot has changed. Kids today are directionless and are entering an increasingly shallow and corrupt world after graduation. What we are taught to believe in is almost rendered completely useless as the real world comes at us in its unrelenting fashion.
While “Top Gun” shot Tom Cruise into the stratosphere of stardom, “Risky Business” was the movie that made him a star. And that’s not just because we got to see him dancing around the living room in his underwear. There is no one else who could have played this role as well as he does here. Tom gives us a seemingly innocent kid dealing with conflicting emotions and fears, and he has great moments where he shows this without saying a word. I know I say that a lot in my reviews, of how people do the best acting with their face and no dialogue, but Tom’s performance here is a great example of that. By the end of the movie, he succeeds in taking Joel Goodson from an innocent kid to a stronger if corrupted young man with the world ahead of him.
Rebecca DeMornay is also great as Lana and shows her at times to be as tough as steel while at the same time showing her vulnerabilities. In her eyes, you can see a very sad person. You are never sure whether or not you can fully trust her, but you cannot resist being around her even if she can be very bad for you. And like everything else in this movie, she compliments the music score by Tangerine Dream very well. This movie got her career off to a great start.
Speaking of that, this movie got a lot of careers up and running as well as it did Tom’s and Rebecca’s. It’s hard to believe that this is one of Joe Pantoliano’s very first movies, and he plays Lana’s pimp, Guido. Joe is at times tough and intimidating, and there are other great moments where he humorously offers to sell Joel Goodson his life back. What other movies can you think of where you see someone so excited to sell furniture back to its intended owner?
The Blu-Ray disc of the 25th Anniversary edition features the audio/video commentary with writer/director Marshall Brickman, Tom Cruise who almost never does commentaries, and “Righteous Kill” hack… Ahem, excuse me, director Jon Avnet. Don’t get too excited though, there is no couch jumping by any pf the participants let alone Tom Cruise. There is also the requisite documentary on the making of the movie with all its participants looking back on the movie years later. This one is very good and it also features some other perspectives on it from Amy Heckerling, Cameron Crowe, and film critic Peter Travers among others. We also get to see the original screen tests with Tom Cruise and Rebecca DeMornay. The movie itself looks great in Blu-Ray regardless of the grain that you see here and there. That seems to be the case with a lot of older movies when they go to Blu-Ray.
Many people can’t stand Tom Cruise today (I’m not sure I can either to be honest), but that doesn’t take away from his work in “Risky Business” which remains one of the great teen comedies (let alone teen movies) ever made. Catching up with it again was worth it, and I appreciated it a lot more now than when I was eight years old. Things have changed a little since then.
Ok mom and dad, I’ll go to my room, but my brother said I could watch it!
**** out of ****
One of the greats. The first VHS that got a lot of play when I would go over to friend's houses in high school. No doubt.
It does hold up very well.
Excellent review as always.