Valley Girl

The first time I saw Valley Girl, I was bedridden and as sick as a dog, out of junior high school for two weeks with a nasty illness. I watched it on a tiny black and white set with the volume turned down to a whisper so my parents wouldn't hear and make me shut it off. I was mesmerized. It was a revelation. Martha Coolidge's milking of the Romeo and Juliet premise (with Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman filling in as star-crossed lovers in the San Fernando Valley) was smart and convincing. I was amazed by the hot "Val" chicks. I was thrilled by the interesting vocabulary words. I wanted to be like Cage's tough Randy and fall in love with a beautiful girl like Foreman's Julie to the sounds of Eddie Grant, Modern English, and The Plimsouls.

"Valley Girl" is one of those rare films that's much better today, nearly 40 years later, than when it was released. In its time, it was just another romantic teen comedy, lost in a sea of many during that time period, but today it's a fascinating time capsule of early 1980s Los Angeles - the people, the places, the accents (even if much of it is stylized and over the top). By taking us to a place and culture now mostly gone and forgotten, something about "Valley Girl" gets elevated a notch or two, and it becomes an absolutely fascinating thing to watch.

You can tell by watching "Valley Girl" why Nicolas Cage became a star. He is eminently watchable. The camera just eats him up, and so do we. His female co-star, Deborah Foreman, never amounted to much, but is also highly watchable at the height of her beauty in this film. Together, they succeed in carrying this film and you want to see what happens to them, even if it's silly at times.

Everything today is so heavy and moody, exhibit A being the curmudgeonly reviewers here crapping all over "Valley Girl" because it isn't "high art" or something. Yes, "Valley Girl" is a light-hearted romantic film. That's all it ever set out to be, and it's a fun and nostalgic film to watch (if you have the right attitude...)

The teen movie of my generation is *not* "Valley Girl"-- it's "Clueless". I can hardly recall Bush's presidency much less Reagan's. My earliest recollection of fashion magazines does not include sun-tanned celebrities with feathered hair but rather pale, flannel-wrapped grunge girls. However, I do know enough about the valley girl phenomenon: the talk, the style of dress, the malls and gallerias, the hippy parentage, the wholesomeness, the pastels..you know what I mean. So I wasn't completely detached when I saw the movie.

So now to what I thought of it: I really really liked this movie. I even bought the video.

I think growing up surrounded by the GenX mumbo jumbo made me appreciate this light-hearted flick. It's a nice love story, kind of like a watered down Romeo and Juliet. The acting may not have been good enough for Shakespeare, but it's a movie, so it's perfectly fine that these people are "actors" and not melodramatic "thespians". Also the script was just right; it wasn't too phony, it had a sense of humor.. Examples would be Randy and his friend's visit to the valley party. The bathroom scene was ticklish.

Randy's depression and Julie's frustration and heart-to-heart with her dad were parts of the movie that didn't disappoint. In other movies of this kind the actors are often unable to carry their characters from one emotional situation to the next, and they end up making themselves unpleasantly flat. Randy and Julie have appropriate sincerity--remember, they're playing two young kids in love. The dreamy, whimsical quality of the movie fits just right.

In conclusion, this is a wonderful, timeless movie. Though the time in which it is set plays a major role in the movie, the essential love story is timeless. The great thing about this movie is that it uses a *very* common theme but still comes out fresh and affective. Even for younger viewers like me, who didn't grow up in the 80s, the movie can be just as endearing as it was to its first audiences.

In the tradition of "Romeo and Juliet," a punker named Randy (Nicholas Cage) begins a relationship with shallow teenage girl named Julie (Deborah Foreman), but peer pressure from her equally shallow friends forces her to break up and go back to her ex-boyfriend (Michael Bowen). Randy refuses to take this lying down and tries to get Julie back. Will he succeed?

Fine performances by Cage, Foreman, Frederick Forrest and Colleen Camp (as Julie's hippie parents), sensitive directing by Martha Coolidge, and totally tubular soundtrack by Modern English, The Plimsouls, and Men at Work (to name a few) makes this fun sleeper one of the best 80's teen comedies (fer shure).

My evaluation: *** out of ****

I was born a year after this movie came out, so I couldn't relate to it right when it came out.

I just recently saw Valley Girl a few days ago on the WE channel. I thought it was an interesting movie... Many people say the slang is outdated, but I don't know how many times I've heard someone say that something was "rad" or "awesome" or if someone was "getting laid."

Sure, the characters are vapid and shallow. They're like, from the valley, like, you know? I loved the characters of Fred and Randy, especially. I know many boys that have the attitude Fred has.

Nicholas Cage was SUPERB as Randy. I just wish there were more guys like that character: a rough-and-tumble punk with a dopey grin.

I've got to say, any movie that makes me giggle from the style and makes even Nicholas Cage adorable (Keep in mind that I come from his "action movie only era") rocks.