Romantic comedy/adventure. Clint had seen this many times as a kid, and it used to be one of his favorite movies — but Carolyn had never seen this. I actually thought it was another Savage Steve Holland production (Eek! The Cat, One Crazy Summer, How I Got Into College), but it was actually a Rob Reiner movie.
This was always an enjoyable comedy as a young adolescent, and it was still entertaining as an adult. Carolyn thought it was pretty funny too — “It wasn’t knock my socks off funny, but still funny”.
The cast was good — it starred John Cusack. This was quite close to John Cusack’s first role — he was still in highschool, and had to have his legal guardianship changed so that one of the movie crew was his legal guardian. Daphne Zunaga (who played the quite young, hot, and getting-over-her-repression leading lady) had not yet gone on to be in Melrose Place, and it was actually credited as “introducing Nicolette Sheridan” — now she is widely known as one of the Desperate Housewives.
The movie involved a couple college parties, hitchhiking across the country, and one bar scene — so it had its party and adventure moments. There was plenty of straight-comedy to spice up the romantic-comedy. Cusack plays a delightfully quirky character, while Zunaga plays a completely repressed academic whose life is ruled by her day-planner.
This is the movie that taught me what shotgunning a beer was — making a hole in the bottom of a beer can with a pen and what-not. I used to imitate with Coca-Cola back in middle/high school, but Carolyn has never done it. It also had a scene where Cusack walks into Zunaga’s dorm room, sees a huge wall-sized photo of a face, and just decides to poke its eyes — all within half a second. The speed at which he decides to do this always used to make me laugh my ASS off as a kid — the timing was amazing … But as an adult, that one moment wasn’t as funny. Did part of me die?
I would recommend this movie to any John Cusack fan, but only to Nicolette Sheridan fans if they don’t mind that she’s only in the movie for about 2 minutes. If you’re watching a movie every night of your life, you should make room for this, but if you watch a movie once a month, you should probably skip this.
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