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 ****

“High school is the bottom. Being a teenager sucks! But that’s the point! Surviving it is the whole point!”

-Christian Slater from “Pump Up The Volume”

High school. Like all of you, I do not miss those years and you couldn’t pay me enough to go back to all that nonsense. The peer pressure, the rejection, the heartache, the unfulfilled longings, and all that pressure that is unloaded on us by our parents when it comes to getting into a good college. Still, I keep wondering what it is like for the kids of today. They get to deal with all the new advances in technology that I never got to deal with back then, but has the way we deal with each other in high school changed? Are people nicer now after the needless tragedies that were Columbine among others? Or have things simply gotten worse? After you see “American Teen,” I think you will agree that things as a teenager and in high school are neither better nor worse. In fact, everything remains the same. There are the cliques, the pressure to get into the right college, and there are those who fit in, and those who don’t and feel endlessly rejected. It’s been close to 15 years since I graduated from high school, and kids still go through the same crap. My step niece is about to start high school, so you can imagine how worried I am about her.

“American Teen” is a documentary directed by Nanette Burstein, and she has previously directed “The Kid Stays In The Picture” and “On The Ropes.” Here, she gives more or less “The Breakfast Club” as a documentary as she follows the lives of various teenagers as they go through their senior year at small town Indiana high school. Nanette has crafted a very absorbing documentary that follows the lives of these people, and how they get through a year that is tough and full of immense pressure for all of them. There is nothing really edgy about this film, and it doesn’t really deal with much with drugs, sex, or school violence. What Nanette succeeds in doing here is taking these stereotypes of the jock, the nerd, the rebel, and the beautiful, and she turns them upside down as she looks closely at the personalities that inhabit them. She has gone on record and said that she considers herself a part of the “John Hughes generation,” and it’s very interesting how she takes that and makes into a movie filled with real people.

Now, I haven’t seen these other documentaries like “The Hills” or “The Real World,” or for that matter, any of the many documentaries that can be seen on PBS. Therefore, I cannot really compare them to this particular film. All the same, I think this one has a lot more to offer those who view, and I think it is also good viewing for those who are in high school now and who think they are the only ones going through what they go through. It’s important for them to know that they are not alone, and that we also need to listen to what they have to say.

Of all the people in this movie, the one that comes across as the most appealing is Hannah Bailey, the liberal rebel of the highly conservative town where this film takes place. She starts off the movie as a free spirit of a person, and deep down, she is the person that many of us really wanted to be like: free spirited and not concerned of how others think of her. However, that part of her is forever shattered when her boyfriend who she was madly in love with, ends up breaking up with her after they have made out. Her emotional devastation is hard to witness as we all have dealt with the harsh pangs of young love. Hannah ends up getting so depressed that she cannot bring herself to go to school in fear of what others will think of her. With her breakup comes a feeling of worthlessness that can easily engulf a young person and change who they are. Throughout the movie, Hannah’s journey is the most interesting, and she is the one that you really root for.

We also have Jake Tusing who is considered the nerd of the picture with a face ravaged with acne that cries out endlessly for a dermatologist. Jake is a guy that you at times feel sorry for, and later cringe at when he talks. A painfully shy kid who still suffers from the emotional scars brought upon him in junior high, we see him be visibly uncomfortable when he is around large groups of people. In many ways, he becomes his own worst enemy as we his defenses go up as his attempts to stick with a girlfriend after he gets one ends up failing. We start to see him push people away before they have the chance to do the same to him. Jake almost threatens to be like Heather Matarazzo’s character from “Welcome To The Dollhouse” as he goes from being likable to unlikable throughout the movie.

Then there is Colin Clemens (no relation to Roger) who is the star of the high school basketball team in a town where basketball is like a religion everyone follows. We see him as his dad keeps pressuring him to make those shots in the game when he is not doing his Elvis impersonation act for the local senior citizens who refuse to believe that he is dead. The amount of pressure comes from the fact that Colin’s family does not have enough money to send him to college, and that his best hope is to impress the college recruiters so that he can get a basketball scholarship. Colin comes across as a good kid whose parental influence leads him to make some crucial and painful mistakes in the film, but who comes around to become a better person and teammate by the film’s end.

Finally, we have the most popular person at the school that is a bitch beyond repair when you cross her. Her name is Megan Krizmanich, and she is the daughter of a prominent local surgeon, the student council vice president, and the homecoming queen. She is what many of us may call “little miss perfect” even if she is far from it. She is like Rachel McAdam’s character of Regina George from “Mean Girls” in that she is one of the most popular people in high school as well as one of the most loathed (from the audience’s perspective anyway). She is under enormous pressure to get accepted to Notre Dame, as all her family members (except for one who died prematurely) have gotten accepted to Notre Dame. I won’t spoil it if she gets in or not, but when she gets the letter from the school, her expression isn’t so much happiness or sadness as it is sheer relief that this part of her life is now past.

One of the taglines of this movie is “which one were you?” But in many ways, you should be able to see a bit of yourself in any of these people irregardless of what high school stereotype you ended up in. The pressures, the heartaches, the isolation; we have all experienced it all. After seeing this movie, you may have felt like you lived through your high school years once again. The high school pecking order on the social ladder has not changed at all, and it remains an emotional boiling pot in the adolescent lives of kids.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

-Kurt Russell from “Escape From LA”

I wanted to get to know these kids more and more as the film went on, and I wanted them (the majority of them anyway) to succeed in what they wanted to do, and I wanted them to be happy. Happiness can be in such short supply when you are in high school at times. The movie is filled with animated interludes which seek to illustrate the inner lives of its main characters. With Jake, we see him as the hero of those “Legend of Zelda” games he loves to play, rescuing the princess who he longs to have as a girlfriend. With Colin, we see his dream of playing on an NCAA team when he gets out of college. Hannah’s animation interlude illustrates her painful post-break up existence as she feels so differently about herself, and how she is afraid that she will end up like her mother who is manic depressive. Then you have Megan’s moment which you can’t help but laugh at some as she sees Notre Dame as this heavenly existence where she can meet a diverse crowd of people who are nothing like the people she picks on at her high school.

I saw this movie at the Arclight Cinemas in Los Angeles, and this is a great movie to watch with an audience because everyone in the audience (including you) has a strong emotional reaction to what is going on throughout. We share in Hannah’s heartbreak, and in her triumphs as she ends being the real hero of the movie. We cringe and laugh at the socially awkward Jake as he stumbles through conversations with potential girlfriends. When he talks, you can’t help but put your hands in your face and shake your face. With Megan, you feel a hatred and resentment that is eased up a little as you get to know her a little better. All the same, she reminds me of that one blonde cheerleader who interrupted the Shakespeare class by saying:

“THERE IS A RUN IN MY NYLONS!”

All that said, “American Teen” is by no means a perfect documentary. It does feel a bit staged here and there, and it probably was in some cases. Also, while the movie does get deep into its subjects, part of me wished that it went a little deeper. We see that Hannah’s best friend is gay guy who is always there for her when she her self-esteem plummets, but we never really get to him and how he deals with living in a very conservative town. I also wanted to see more of the adults in the movie, and how they raised their children. We complain about the way kids act, but a lot of that has to do with the way their parents spoil them rotten. Trust me, this was a big problem in the town that I grew up in.

Granted, Nanette wanted to this film to be shown from as much of the teenagers’ lives as possible, but the adults factor into this more than we see here. While the movie does show the relationship that Colin has with his Elvis impersonating dad, we don’t get that as much with the other kids. Megan ends up committing a slanderous act of vandalism that she does end up getting busted for, but her dad isn’t so much mad at her for doing it as he is with her not being able to keep from being caught (wha???). You have to wonder what kind of values these kids are being instilled with from their parents because they are not always healthy.

We also see Hannah’s manic depressive mother battling with her over Hannah’s decision to move to San Francisco to pursue a career in TV/Film. Hannah is so determined to get out of Indiana and lead a life that is anything but mundane, and we want to see her accomplish that no matter what the odds are. But her mother ends up telling her that she is “not special.” This is one of the movie’s most wounding moments, and I think that any parent who tells their child that should be bitch-slapped. The world is tough enough as it is without our parents breaking us down like that. That is so wrong!

There is also a good deal of bleeping out of language in this movie. The movie is rated PG-13 despite the f-word being mentioned a couple of times. If the MPAA thinks that they are trying to protect the kids old enough to see this movie from the bad words contained in it, then they have failed. You wouldn’t believe the amount of bad language that I heard in junior high and in high school. It dwarfs the language heard in this movie easily by comparison. It reminds me of Roger Ebert’s argument that “The Breakfast Club” should have been PG-13 instead of R because he felt that the movie was more than appropriate for teenagers. I couldn’t agree more, and the beeping out of “bad” language is ridiculous and only draws more attention to what the MPAA is trying to suppress.

Still, despite its flaws, I still really liked “American Teen” for what it is, and for opening themselves in a way that many others would have been scared off from doing. Whatever you think about this movie, you have to give these kids that because what they did will forever be captured on celluloid and will be burned into our memories forever, regardless of whether they want us to see them differently from how they came across here. It will be interesting to see a follow up to this movie on the kids lives several years from now, and how they have moved on from those brutally painful years. I’m not talking so much about the effect of the movie itself, but the effect their years in high school have on their lives today. They have nowhere to go but up at this point.

Go Hannah!

***1/2 out of ****