Say Anything... (1989)
Oh my God! Everything about this movie is so..., real, pure, and sweet --not made up, not exaggerated, not overdone. It's about love, family, trust, 'self-seeking'... Directed by John Hughes, who also directed other teen hits like Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful; all of which I'm now hunting down. :)
So, I wanted to see this movie because I missed teen movies and I'm tired with all the stuff they put into teen movies these days, so I looked up some of John Hughes movies in the internet, I googled some of the top teen movies of all time -I even looked up Entertainment Weekly's 50 Best High School movies because I felt the need to --blush-- and I found this in almost every place I googled, along with those other movies I included in my recent list. And also, Say Anything... gets good reviews from like, everywhere.I loved the character that John Cusack played in this movie, the awkward, nervous, nineteen year old aspiring kick-boxer boy named Lloyd Dobler. He falls in love with the pretty, intelligent, out-of-his-league, good-girl Diane Court (Ione Skye), and asks her out on a date. Things do not go that easy between them because Diane, who has a very close relationship with her father (John Mahoney), is overprotected and 'kept' closely by him, and she is about to leave for England after recently winning a scholarship.
I loved the fact that for a teen drama-romance, it wasn't shallow, just another typically written romance story of a boy and girl from different backgrounds who fall in love with each other --instead there was a sort of deep emotional touch to it, like I could sense the embarrassment of the beginning of the two young hearts falling in love with the other and the slowly growing affection towards another, then there's the crisis that Diane faces regarding her father being accused by the law, and the choices she needs to take among her father and Lloyd, and Lloyd's struggle after..., you know what, I'm not gonna spoil it.
Okay so I'm not a good reviewer, and I'm writing to express my thoughts on this movie and because I really loved it I had to write it down, but what is most important here that you have to see this movie! If you were born in the 90s like me, and you never heard of this movie before, and you're a die-hard fan of teen romances and stuff --not that I am, lol-- you gotta see this movie. I wish I'd known about this movie sooner! It's like, one of those clean, no-pervert-acts, blossoming-of-young-love movies you have to see because it's just so refreshing and light and yet deep at the same time, and way different from today's typical.
I am absolutely in love with John Cusack here. Even as the awkward Lloyd Dopler, his closest friends indirectly pinpoint him as the 'man' to be with, and it wasn't sarcasm. Lloyd Dopler's character is causing me to really be in love with John Cusack. I mean, the 80s John Cusack. If only I could time travel or something back to that era. I grew up seeing him in movies like Identity, 1408, Runaway Jury, 2012, and to see him be in a movie like this is just..., I never expected that he used to be in movies like this, really. Now I'm hungry for the rest of those 80s teen movies he's starred in, like Sixteen Candles, Better Off Dead, and I'm even hunting down the 2000 movie High Fidelity. Yep, I am now a John Cusack fan. Geez I'm a nineteen year old girl, what's not to be expected about this, right? Hehe. Well, this is all thanks to Olive Penderghast from Easy A, the one who introduced about this stuff to me... I know, sounds cheesy. I may sound like a total ignorant with so "basic" knowledge movie lover to some of you pros... lol. Pardon me.
Now, what else can I say about this movie? One of the things you need to particularly watch out for is the part where John Cusack holds up that boom-box in front of his car for Diane to hear from her bedroom --classic! Yeah, I first saw that from the movie 'Easy A' too. There were many interesting and pretty amusing things going on in that graduation party too, the one where Lloyd becomes the keymaster. And when Diane tells to her father about her feelings for Lloyd and the night she spent with him. And of course, the father and daughter conflict that will soon arise, although not like what you would usually expect happens in teen romance movies.
Okay, so I'm not sure that my review is alluring enough to you, because I normally am unable to remember the details of the movie unless I see it for a second time and I sorta can't direct the details to you now, because this is only my first time seeing it and my thoughts stick to the big picture, but I have a conclusion for this movie: I LOVED IT!!! AND, I loved John Cusack. And no, this isn't a biased review. :)
