Risky Business

When this film was released, it was during the time of the "teen sex comedy" craze. Films like Class and Porky's were all about seeing scores of horny teens in the most raunchy escapades possible. However, this film and Fast Times at Ridgemont High can be seen as more being a little more serious than the others. Risky Business is definitely a commentary on how greed can corrupt an individual and what the consequences can be. Also, the acting in this film, as well as Fast Times, is light years away from Porky's and all films like it and it will always be a classic parable.

There are too many reviews of Risky Business for mine to have any relevance as a movie review. However, this movie is for me a time capsule of the era I saw it in, and a photograph of the future to come in American culture.

I saw this movie when I was 22 in a tiny college theater with a date. I remember several disconnected things about it: The movie was much more interesting than my date was, the music by Tangerine Dream was hypnotic and fit the tone of the film, which struck me as being more depressing in places than funny (although there are some funny moments in it), and it gave me a glimpse into a world that I thought was fictional. It turned out I hadn't experienced the world it was presenting yet. When Cruise asks his friends what they plan to do with their lives, one's answer is very simple and focused: "Make money". Another friend adds: "Make a LOT of money".

It turns out the movie was precognizant of the next ten to twenty years of American culture; the absolute obsession with making money through any means necessary, legally or illegally, regardless of consequences to yourself or others. Then taking that money and buying the things that will make you happy: a porsche, a big house, and most importantly, a hot babe in your bed, that will only be there as long as the money is. Internally discovered happiness? A quaint notion created by the poor who can't afford the toys that validate your existence.

I am sure that the filmmaker would be the first to say that the movie parodies the hollowness of the "American Dream" of acquiring wealth to buy creature comforts, but too much of the time it feels like it celebrates them. At the end, the hooker stays Cruise's girlfriend only as long as he continues to make her money; she even says "I'll be your girlfriend...for a while". Real loyalty there. But then, she is a hooker, and is being honest. She in fact is presented as the only person in the film that is not a hypocrite. She has no illusions that money & sex make the American world go 'round, and doesn't pretend herself to be otherwise; unlike Cruise and the rest of his friends. In the end however, she is still hollow, the values the kids pursue are hollow (they are only after sex, not love), and the movie feels as deep and solid as a glossy magazine ad for a Lexus.

Even over the obsession of greed, however, the film illustrates the complete alienation of the modern American teenage male: alone, isolated, judged by his peers with the kind of car his dad lets him drive, his clothes, and whether he can get laid or not. The emphasis is on sex, not relationship. There is no rite of passage into adulthood, no guidance from parents who more often than not are as distant from their children as the cardboard cutout parents in this film.

In short, as depressing as this film is when you step back from it, it paints a frighteningly accurate portrait of how superficial and narrow a world, yet directionless (except for accumulating superficial wealth) a young boy's world can be. There are no values taught in this film, because there are none available as examples. And that is the environment too many kids are subject to. That is what was so disturbing to me about the film at the time I saw it, yet it took 20 years to understand why (as I was, like most kids my age, in the same vacuous and bankrupt culture this kid was in at the time).

There are 300% more suicides committed by 14 year old boys in America than any other age group or category. This movie explains why.

Seven stars, not for humor, but for photographing the beginning of an era that lasts until this day. The message from Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart and others for American kids will be: Don't get caught. A message which is slowly becoming the only "moral direction" left in American culture.

Rebecca De Mornay at 21 is fabulous as the savvy call girl for any teen boy to die for -- or for that matter any red blooded male of any age. She enters the film gliding silently into the back yard entrance of his parent's off-the-lake Chicago house, and after speaking only a few words, something like "are you ready for me Joel", artistically slips off her demure little slip of a dress, back arched to him, one leg kneeled in the window seat, presses her bottom into him, silently invites him to take her, and then turns, melts into him, kissing him in apparent yielding passion. This is immediately followed by cut scenes to multiple positions in multiple locations around the house. It's a perfect male fantasy of what paid for wild but romantic sex might be like (however unrealistic). It's also undoubtedly Joel's (Cruse's) first time. What an initiation.

The movie never gets that hot again (although the scene enacting Lana's "thing about trains" gets close). But it does become increasingly interesting as a first rate coming of age flick. Actually, it's a bit more than that. It explores the tension between the self disciplined deferred gratification he and has friends have all been taught they need for upper middle class success, versus the let loose sexual and other risk taking he knows is out there, some other people are doing, and wishes he could get away with. How far can a nice upper middle class boy go without throwing it all away? That risky business is what the film is all about.

Tom Cruz is perfect as the dutiful but less than gifted "future enterpriser" high school senior who's always had to work a little harder and stick more to the straight and narrow to try to live up to his parents' expectations -- without quite getting there. Although he was about the same age as De Mornay when they made the film, Cruz looks and acts a thoroughly convincing boyish 16 or 17. De Mornay's Lana is an iconic bad girl hooker of the naturally toney and perhaps feeling variety -- although about the last we're never entirely sure. She remains ultimately an enigma, beyond Cruz's and our full grasp, but not beyond his connecting with. Sadly, her first major role was probably her best -- although certainly not her only good one.

Cruz may be "on the right track", but it's De Mornay's Lana who knows everything about sex, life, taking risks, and living on the edge. She seduces Cruz into turning his parents' home into a bordello, to tap the money to be made by mingling his kind of friends with her kind of friends for a night, while she is hiding out from her "manager", and he has been left to "act responsibly" while his parents are away on a business trip. The scene where the Princeton alumnus interviewer, whom his dad has contacted to try to help finesse his "not quite Ivy League transcript", comes to the house to interview Cruz on the night the bordello party is in full swing, is deliciously funny and at the same time full of nervous tension. Cruz's character is on the brink of disaster, and then in fact clearly has thrown away a good part of his future opportunities -- or has he?

It's a delicious movie -- especially for males raised in seriously high academic achievement oriented families. Every good boy would love to call a Lana sometime -- and get away with it.

Starring in the role that made him a household name, Tom Cruise leads this classic 80s film that ended up being a lot darker and profound than I expected. This isn't your typical teen sex comedy from the 80s. There's a lot of pointed commentary on capitalism, teen fantasy, and coming of age. Rebecca De Mornay is perfectly cast as the alluring, enigmatic call girl Cruise becomes entwined with and is instantly memorable in the role. Risky Business has a lot more to say than you might think and is worth checking out some 40 years later.

RISKY BUSINESS is the smart and sexy 1983 teen comedy that brought intelligence to the genre and made a bonafide movie star out of Tom Cruise. Cruise is utterly winning as Joel Goodson, a high school senior excited about the prospect of having the house to himself when his parents go out of town for a few days; but things go from bad to worse when Joel crosses paths with a nubile prostitute (Rebecca DeMornay). This surprise hit brought an element of sophistication that was absent from a lot of the teen comedies that were populating the screen in the 1980's. This movie boasts a smart screenplay, imaginative direction, a memorable musical score, and on-target performances from Cruise, DeMornay, Curtis Armstrong, Joe Pantoliano (memorable as a slimy pimp), Bronson Pinchot, and Janet Carroll. Tom's sexy underwear dance to "Old Time Rock and Roll" has become Hollywood folklore. An instant classic upon release that still holds up over 20 years later.