Say Anything...

I had a bit of a John Cusack movie fest a few weeks ago, and I spoke about how I got Better Off Dead, and Say Anything mixed up. I was looking for 'the movie with the ghetto blaster above the head' moment, and got my wires crossed and saw Better Off Dead - fortunately, that was a good little flick.

Anyway, Say Anything was on Channel 4 the other night and I ended up watching the whole thing before bed on Sunday night. I had intended to just watch it in stages, but by the time I was half way through I was so invested in the characters that I just kept going.

It's a cracking film, it really is. It's well observed with detailed characters, and as you should all know by now (as I've said it a bunch of times) anything with John Cusack in it is worth seeing (it's why I'll probably end up going to see 2012 soon - well, that and simply wanting to see stuff fall over for two hours).

I found myself connected to these characters, and it made me yearn for my teenage/student years. Little moments here and there reminding me of those years gone by, all delivered spot-on by Cusack who - as usual - gave an honest and inspiring performance. It almost feels like a forerunner to High Fidelity which came along a decade later, and that's no bad thing at all of course.

I also found it quite enthralling as I've been busy re-drafting a script (which I talked about the other day), and they both skirt similar territories - so Say Anything is helping to inspire me to finish off the last tweaks and start getting that script sent out there.

Say Anything gets a big old thumbs up from me. It's a 1980s teen-com with John Cusack in it. What's not to like?

Better Off Dead...

Originally looking for Say Anything - 'the movie where John Cusack holds a ghetto blaster above his head' - I'd gotten my wires crossed after seeing the cover for Better Off Dead so repeatedly. So off I trotted fully expecting that very scene (which I've seen lampooned all over the place, especially animated sitcoms from Fox), and I didn't get it - naturally - it's the wrong damn movie for that scene.

It does still have John Cusack in it, and it's still a good watch. It's almost like the a John Hughes movie strained through a sort of teenage, sub-Monty Python filter. It's oftentimes utterly bizarre, or blackly comic, or just downright weird.

It makes no excuse for being fairly scattergun with certain subplots (suicide contemplation, and a techno-whizz-kid little brother, for two examples) and it does feel generally low budget throughout. It doesn't have the flair of a Hughes movie from the 1980s, it doesn't have the flashy soundtrack (although the animated hamburger dancing to Van Halen is a highlight), but it does have John Cusack ... and like I've said before, if it's got him in it, it's worth seeing.

Jilted by his social class obsessed girlfriend (who trades up to some skiing douchebag spawn of a WASP community), Cusack's bewildered teenager attempts suicide and generally bumps around from moment to increasingly odd moment. A maths class with exceptionally eager and capable students (except him), for example, sets up this protagonist as a real outsider in a 'perfect' suburban world.

Then throw in a chubby neighbour's amorous advances on a French exchange student, a Howard Cosell-like Asian duo, and that aforementioned kid brother and you've got one oddball kind of 80s teen comedy.

It almost has its cake and eats it too ... it's not schmaltzy, but it still ends happily ... and rather than a whole generation of disjointed teenagers (a la John Hughes), it's just Cusack's bewildered, day-dreaming teen all on his own in a rather crazy world.

Although scattergun in its handling of the occasionally bizarre plot, and not as tightly written as a Hughes movie, it still offers plenty of free-and-easy fun.

Oh, and in case I hadn't mentioned already a bunch of times, having John Cusack in it automatically makes it worth seeing.