Valley Girl (1983) review

Flip up your collars, bust out the pint of Häagan-Daazs, redecorate the home with floral print wallpaper and roll out the orange-brown carpet, blast the New Wave music and drive in your beige Mercedes 380SL to your nearest mall for lunch at "Hot Dog on a Stick"- it's for sure, like totally, 1983.

The film begins in a mall with Julie and her friends shopping and hilariously outdated credit card imprinters are being manually operated. Julie and her friends are having conversations where they use valley slang and the word "like" repeatedly - a foreshadowing of the dumbing down of the English language in the 21st century. They run into her boyfriend Tommy, played brilliantly by Michael Bowen, and she breaks up with him then hands him some kind of relationship bracelet. They go to the beach and Randy's friend Fred overhears the address of a party.

The two end up crashing the party and then get tossed out. I love how Suzi and her step-mom are serving disgusting looking sushi, in the kitchen they are spreading what looks like peanut butter on the sushi, and the guys in striped polo shirts and tight-fitting jeans are loving it. It's implied that Suzi's step-mom, who looks about merely 5 years older than Suzi, is raising her because her father passed away.

The party scenes are what I like about this film - they show a snapshot of what life was like in 1983. The house is a typical ugly, late 1970's built southern California home. The outside is brown with ugly stone finishes and the inside has hideous burnt orange carpeting and floral print wall paper. Even the bathroom has carpeting!

Tommy is established as an asshole when he takes advantage of Julie's friend Loryn. This scene is actually heartbreaking.

Randy climbs back into the house through the bathroom window, which is reminiscent of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. The movie is obviously a post-modern take on the play. Even her name is Julie and in a later scene there is a marquee for Romeo and Juliet in the background.

Randy and Fred take Julie and her friend Stacey to a Hollywood rock club. There's some cool scenes along the way show landmarks like "The Roxy" and "Rainbow Bar and Grill" on Sunset Blvd. Inside the club Randy tells them that the dark, dingy club is "the real world" and goes on a rant that they listen to "gutless techno-rock" and that Julie and her friends are "all fucking programmed". Then he asks "when can I see you again?" It's off-putting but Julie is mesmerized by his brazenness and makes out with Randy.

That's the films biggest flaw. The Julie character is very 2-dimensional, naive and Deborah Foreman's acting is terrible. She constantly has her mouth open and seems mentally challenged. She seems much older than a high school student as well and she reminds me of a realtor. There's a great 80's montage with Modern English's "I Melt With You" to establish that the characters, even though there is no real chemistry, are falling in love with each other.

I like the Fred character played by Cameron Dye. The film would have been more compelling if the two leads were played by he and Heidi Holicker, who plays Stacey.

No romantic comedy would complete without the obligatory "girl bonding" moment and this happens with Julie and her friends eating junk food and dancing in their underwear. Julie now uses the word "fuck" to the chagrin of her friends.

There's an unnecessary side story with a character named Skip who both Suzi and her step-mom are smitten with. During the girl bonding scene Skip calls hoping to get Suzi's step-mom but is disappointed when Suzi answers the phone. Skip is shirtless and listening to some weird, terrible 80's electronic music. His room is creepily covered with posters of half-naked women. In the next scene he's riding his bike to Suzi's house hoping to catch her step-mom and possible fuck her. Earlier in the film he delivered groceries to her (I didn't know they did this back in 1983) and she mentioned that he should come by when Suzi isn't around. Does Suzi's step-mom have a job? How can she afford that house on her own with no apparent income?

Skip lets himself into the house and makes his way to the upstairs bathroom where a woman is showering behind an opaque shower screen. It's clearly not the red headed step-mom judging by the dark color of the hair and pubes but the director wants you to think it's her. Then you see a trail of clothing (I cringe when movies do this) leading the camera to Skip humping someone. The stepmom walks in on Suzi and Skip having sex. It's a very dumb scene but very 1980's! 

Julie's friends pressure her to dump Randy because he's from the wrong side of town and urge her to get back together with Tommy. She acquiesces and then, another flaw in the film, Tommy for no reason at all appears at the diner puts his sleazy bracelet back on her. I guess this shows that she's his property? 

Julie breaks up with Randy and he quickly gets wasted. He has a classic Nick Cage freak-out moment before entering the rock club he first took Julie. He quickly hooks up with an old flame and nails her in the dilapidated ladies room. He exits the club and tries to start a fight with some chicanos but Fred (again, another flaw) appears out of nowhere and stops him. Where do these guys live? Where are their parents? How does he buy alcohol? Randy tells Julie that he and Fred go to Hollywood high school but it doesn't seem like he ever attends school. One morning when he's trying to win Julie back he jumps into a car with her but shouldn't he be in class?

Fred tells Randy that he has some kind of plan to get Julie back for him so they crash her prom. The moment when the film really dates itself is when the hired band sings a song called "Johnny Are You Queer". Can you imagine the kind of shit storm that would happen if a high school allowed a band to play a song like that at prom today?! 

Tommy finally gets his comeuppance when Randy kicks him in the balls and thrashes him. Randy and Julie run out of the school auditorium, jump in the Chrysler limo and drive away. The limo driver asks if their destination is the Valley Sheraton, which I guess is the local sex tryst, and Julie symbolically removes Tommy's property bracelet. The moment after she flings it out the window, the jangly guitars of "I Melt With You" kick in and Randy briefly looks into the camera. The limo floats down the freeway past the Sherman Oaks Galleria (another mall) to the hotel.

At that moment I forgive the film for some of its faults. There's something magical and innocent about the end of the movie that I feel like doesn't exist in movies anymore. I was just a kid in the 80's but I always think of it as a more simple, naive time. People like Suzi's step-mom could afford a large two-story home with a swimming pool in a nice neighborhood. Your parents could be hippies like Julie's affable parents who just want to smoke weed and run a a health food store. 

Even Julie's friends, who pressure her into getting back with Tommy, are pretty innocuous and well-meaning. I actually really like her Julie's friends Suzi, Loryn and Stacey. They don't slut shame each other like girls today do. They even worry about Loryn because she brags about some possible promiscuity. This probably wouldn't happen today. High school students today would go on social media and post pictures of Julie making out with Randy and ridicule her for it.

I can forgive the film some problems too because it's a romantic comedy so it's automatically going to follow the cliched formula of: character looking for something more of out life, the meet cute, honeymoon period, some complication, the dilemma, dark moment and then happy ending. The film has the best 80's music soundtrack as well.

Conclusion: a mediocre film but worth watching, an excellent snapshot of a simpler time with great music and a charming ending