Date Added

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Posted In

General, Movies

Tagged

80's comedy films greg tolan Just One Of The Guys karate kid Movies rick moorehouse

A tribute to you Greg: LIFT!

Description

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of 80′s movies again. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia that drives me back to them, or the simple fact that there were a lot of funny movies made in the 80′s, and it’s kind of neat to revisit them if for nothing else than to see how fashion and technology has changed.  One of my all time favorite movies from the 80′s has to be the comedy gem, Just One of the Guys.  My friend Steve is the only other person I’ve met that has seen this movie.  For those of you who don’t know, it’s an 80′s comedy that follows Terry, a pretty high school senior that has dreams of being a reporter.  She enters a school journalism contest for a chance to win a job at a local paper.  After she loses the contest, she chalks it up to the fact that she’s a pretty girl, and therefore isn’t taken seriously.  She decides that the only way to prove herself is to transfer to another school, cut her hair, and pretend to be a guy so that she can enter a similar journalism contest at her new school.  She meets a nerdy guy named Rick Moorehouse, and decides that helping him become “cool” and land a date to the prom will make a great article.  With the help of her raunchy younger brother Buddy, cross dressing hijinks ensue.

I love this movie because it follows one of the prime 80′s teen comedy staples.  Parents going on a trip, and leaving their kids home alone for weeks at a time.  Seriously, it seems like every 80’s comedy started with parents leaving on some vacation or business trip that would have them away for weeks, without any concern for their kids staying home this entire time by themselves.  Prime examples of other 80′s movies following this format are Weird Science, Risky Business and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead, although to be fair, that one at least had a 90 year old babysitter for the first few minutes.

I also like how this movie just chooses not to address some of the larger lingering questions.  How did Terry enroll at a new school by herself without transcripts, transfers papers, parent signatures?  Didn’t her old school notice she was gone for weeks without attending class?  And for the love of god, where were her parents!

The actress in this movie  bears an uncanny resemblance to Ralph Machio, so much so there is actually a great line in the film that one of the other characters uses to describe the “male” version of Terry: “He dresses like Elvis Costello and looks like the Karate Kid”.  Hey, any reference to the Karate Kid makes for an instant winner in my book.  This is just a great example of a typical 80′s comedy.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly renting a copy and let yourself be taken back to the 80′s.  Until next time…