Valley Girl (R)
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This came out in 1983, but I don't think I'd ever heard of it until I saw it in the $5 DVD bin at Walmart, probably in the late 2000s or early 2010s. Anyway, I didn't get around to watching it until 2013. Pretty much the only reason I even bought it was because Michelle Meyrink was in it, and I adored her in Real Genius, which came out a couple years later (but which I actually saw sometime in the 80s). However, her role in this movie was relatively minor, and I don't think I ever would have recognized her if I wasn't looking for her in it. (In fact even when I was looking for her, most of the time I still didn't recognize her, and was constantly trying to tell her apart from another, slightly more important character, because they both had the same hair color and both looked fairly unmemorable to me.) The main characters are played by Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman, though I should mention that Foreman apparently isn't the girl in the picture on the DVD case. I read that online, but I never would have been able to tell the difference. (But it may not be true of all home media releases of the movie, anyway.) At least I can say she and Cage are wearing things on the case that they never wear in the film. Oh, and I guess Foreman also had a role in Real Genius, but I never would have known that, either. Another vaguely familiar actress in this movie is Elizabeth Daily, better known to me as a voice actress from some cartoons.

Anyway, Foreman plays a Valley girl named Julie, who has a few Valley girl friends named Stacey, Loryn (Daily), and Suzi (Meyrink). At the start of the movie, Julie breaks up with her long-time boyfriend, Tommy. Later, the girls are all at the beach, talking about a party Suzi's going to be throwing. They see a guy on the beach who they all think is hot; this is Cage's character, Randy. Randy has a friend named Fred, who overhears a couple of the girls talking about Suzi's party, and later he drags Randy along with him to crash the party. At one point during the party, Tommy hooks up with Loryn, but wants to keep that a secret, because he still wants to get Julie back. Meanwhile, Randy meets Julie, and they feel an instant connection to each other. When Tommy sees this, he and his friends kick Randy and Fred out of the party. But later, Randy sneaks back in and asks Julie to go out with him. She agrees, but brings Stacey along, even though Stacey is very much opposed to the idea. Fred keeps hitting on Stacey, who most of the time seems totally grossed out by him, though there was one point when I thought she didn't seem to mind too much. Anyway, after that, Julie and Randy start going out a lot, even though Julie's friends think it's a mistake, because he's from Hollywood. (This is apparently not what most people in the world think of when they think of Hollywood, but rather implies something much seedier, especially from a Valley perspective.) And I guess Randy and Fred are supposed to be punks, but personally I think real punks would just find them lame and kick their asses. Oh, and incidentally, there's a minor subplot about Suzi being interested in a guy named Skip, though her stepmom, Beth, is also interested in Skip.

At one point during Julie and Randy's courtship, we see them in front of a marquee for "Romeo and Juliet," which I thought was perhaps mildly clever, if a bit obvious, given the star-crossed lovers theme (not that Randy and Julie ever actually become lovers). Later I read that the movie was "loosely based on Romeo and Juliet," but I think that's taking it too far. I mean, Julie's family wasn't opposed to the relationship at all, and we never even see Randy's family. Besides which, Romeo and Juliet were from the same place, and there was no class or social distinction between them. Aside from the fact that Julie's name is just one letter away from "Juliet" and Randy's name... uh, starts with an "R," I think what this movie has most in common with that play is the fact that neither story ever gave me the slightest indication of why the main characters are supposed to be in love. That's something that always bothered me about Romeo & Juliet, though in this movie the problem is even more pronounced. Julie and Randy literally have nothing in common, aside from finding each other attractive. Neither of them even seems to like anything about the world in which the other lives. Certainly they dislike each other's personalities (or would dislike the exact same personality in anyone else)... but they still like each other. (I do sort of like that Julie herself says she has no idea why she likes him.) Anyway... eventually Julie has to make a decision about whether to keep seeing Randy, or get back together with Tommy. Personally, I think she would have been much better off without either of them, because Tommy's a total jerk and Randy's just... weird. (Most of the time he's laconic, doesn't seem to think much at all, and basically seems stoned- though I don't know that he ever smoked anything. Sometimes though, he just randomly says random things to random people he apparently knows from somewhere, and sometimes emits a strange, random, squawky laugh for no apparent reason.)

Anyway, I'm afraid I found this to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I'd say the writing was terrible, but I'm not convinced there even was much writing. It seemed more like the director gave the actors a few vague plot points, and told them to just make up random stuff to fill time while the movie lurches along from point A to point B. And none of the actors seem skilled at improv. But probably there was a script, and it just sucked, I dunno. I do wish more had been done with the Suzi-Skip-Beth subplot, because that never seemed to go much of anywhere. And I wish Loryn's role had been written better. I could definitely tell she was conflicted about whether Julie should be with Tommy, even though she didn't want her to be with Randy. I think Loryn's the only one who realized Tommy was a jerk, though it's not entirely clear whether she was reluctant to go along with the other girls telling Julie to get back together with him because she genuinely cared about Julie's best interests, or because she had an interest in being with Tommy, herself. In spite of his being a jerk. In any event, she did go along with what her friends advised Julie to do, so... her conflict was pretty pointless, after all. Probably the only people in the movie who I found at all likable were Julie's parents, Sarah and Steve, who were both holdover hippies. Steve was particularly amusing, and the only person who ever had good advice for Julie, even if she didn't pay much attention to it.

What else can I say? At one point, Julie was taking a driving test, and her instructor was played by Richard Sanders (best known as Les from WKRP in Cincinnati), so that was kind of fun. And actually there were some other amusing moments in the movie, none of which I can specifically recall, now. And there was some decent music. (At one point, "I Melt with You" played, and I was all "No way, this song is way too good to be in this movie.") But it wasn't just background soundtrack music, there was also some live music from a couple of different bands, which was cool. (The Plimsouls played at a club Randy frequented; and Josie Cotton played at Julie's prom, which is odd, because I feel like that's not the kind of music the Valley kids would be into.)

There was a remake in 2020, but I don't have much interest in ever seeing it.