Hello baby

Unlike other viewers, I didn't really connect with this on any major level. And I don't think their longing for each other was anything more than adolescent infatuation (hey, we've all been there!), made all the more desperate by separation anxiety. A couple of 18-year-olds struggling to find themselves in the world. OK as a romantic comedy drama, but no great shakes.

Performances were all solid. Interesting to see Matthew Modine pop up briefly as the college boyfriend. And it looked great -- nice and moody -- seemed like something out of the 1960s.

One thing bothered me: The use of Bruce Springsteen songs from the 1970s in a movie that was to have taken place in 1967 (not 1965, as another reviewer said -- the signs at Rosanna Arquette's prom clearly said, "Class of 1967"). Anyway, those Springsteen songs from the soundtrack wouldn't have been out yet. But I guess it was done to add a "Jersey feel" to the movie.

This is an early picture by the inimitable John Sayles -- a portrait of Trenton some time in the mid-1960s through the eyes of the Rosanna Arquette, a middle-class aspiring actress who wants to go to Sarah Lawrence and Vincent Spano, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks. It looks like it was sold to the suits at Paramount on his writing ability and the rising tide of John-Landis-style teen comedies. Looking back from a third of a century later, I can see the complexity of story-telling, in the banal "bad-boy-good-girl" love story in a world that was about to vanish, as an act of satire... rendered a bit toothless, alas by its separation from the moment and the cluelessness of the characters. It makes them more real. Sayles' targets are too numerous here for accuracy.

Quite a few careers got started in this 1982 Paramount release. Rosanna Arquette and Vincent Spano made their starring debuts, John Sayles landed his first major directing job and the film also features small parts by future stars Robert Downey Jr., Tracy Pollan and Matthew Modine. Set in 1965, a fine period soundtrack helps to propel this story of two mismatched teenagers (Arquette, Spano) whose love affair stems a lot of controversy within their community. The film is OK but time has not served it entirely well as sometimes it seems dated and it still suffers from being as obscure as it was when it was originally released.

"Baby, It's You" is a love story about a young woman named Jill (Rosanna Arquette), who grows up in New Jersey during the sixties and meets a troubled and troublesome swindler named Sheik (Vincent Spano). They go out together during highschool but once college days come, Jill forgets Sheik and he becomes a Frank Sinatra impersonator for a fancy restaurant in Miami. But after he is booted from the joint and drives all the way back to New Jersey to be with her, she admits she no longer has feelings for him.

Movies like this can be a bit hard to review because on a technical level they are worthless. Sometimes, though, the film itself is fun to watch--I am a sucker for old eighties comedies, the decade of low-budget comedies that disappeared into a vault somewhere and air on television at three o'clock in the morning. "Baby, It's You," however, isn't even that fun to watch, mainly because it goes nowhere for its two-hour running time. Sure, it kept my interest, and there's no doubt that it is a pretty intriguing film, but it's been done before in a better fashion--and all in all, "Baby, It's You" likes to repeat itself. A lot.

Things don't move nearly as quickly as they should. The setup for the movie takes forever--and then we find out the setup wasn't a setup at all. I left wondering, What IS the point of this movie? The core message is pretty simple--a lovebird couple seperate when college comes around and one of them loses the attraction for the other. But "Baby, It's You" doesn't do this like it should--it takes side routes into too many subplots. For example, at first Jill hates Sheik. Then she goes out with him. Then she breaks up with him. Then he kidnaps her, holds a gun to her head and tells her to say she's sorry. Then they're back together. Then Sheik commits a robbery and almost gets caught. Then they seperate. Then...

What is the point? Why the stupid subplots? Why would Jill love a ruthless punk who stalks and kidnaps her? This is a depressing movie, not because of what happens, but simply because it goes nowhere. "Baby, It's You" is strangely intriguing, but as a film it should have gone through a much greater thought process before they decided to put it on the big screen. After all, there is a reason that it is one of the most unknown films of all time.

I did find some things in "Baby, It's You" interesting, such as how Sheik corrupts Jill, but then when he turns around to be with her again, she acts like he did early on in the film. For example: Sheik is a rich playboy criminal in the beginning who cheats on Jill and so on and so forth. Jill doesn't want to "do it" with Sheik. But after college, she turns into the promiscuous one and he turns into the moral one. She becomes a drunk, depressed soul. Is that the point of the movie? That hanging around the wrong crowd can rub off on you? Or is the point that people who fall in love aren't always in love? Or is it just meant to be a depressing love story? Who cares. And I'm not stating that two-word sentence as a question.

2.5/5 stars.

• John Ulmer

I always dreamed and fantasized about falling for a hood like Sheik. "Nice" girls who grew up in the 1960's and were in the honor society were supposed to achieve the questionable goal of marrying a nice boy who would earn well and buy us a nice house in the suburbs, where we would presumably have some nice children...

And this, in a word, is what lends "Baby, It's You" its poignancy. High school is the one place, the last place, in which the unlikely and all-too-temporary coupling of a female "achiever" bound for suburban "niceness" and the magnetic male "underachiever" bound for urban "unniceness" can occur. Sheik/Albert Capadilupo ("Is he an Arab?" "No, Italian.") embodies all the qualities that leader-type Jill Rosen has been told time and time again do not make a good, suitable husband or match or date: he disdains academic achievement, he is "good" with his hands, he drives fast, he has underworld connections, he knows how to kiss..and possibly how to do other things. Jill Rosen, in turn, has dreamy eyes, answers questions in class, gets good grades, and has ambitions of being something very much more than a "wife," qualities which fascinate and often infuriate Sheikh.

In the course of the movie, the on-again, off-again romance between them -which features all the quirkiness and unpredictability of most high-school romances, and then some- lights up, then sputters, then heats up again. My favorite movie scene of all time takes place when a sleepless maniacal Sheik barrels up US Route 1 from Miami in a series of stolen cars, then collars numerous shocked and amazed debutante types in the Student Center in order to locate Jill.

Free of sci-fi special effects or surrealistic flashbacks, this is a movie for people who love and believe in "romance" in the truest sense of the word - that one brief "Camelot"-like time when two people from different backgrounds and even worlds light up the world for each other, even though they sense it will end all too soon.