For that segment of the population that doesn’t remember a time before email and social media, the 1980s have the haze of nostalgia, a romanticism borne from snappy oddities like skinny ties, checkered sneakers and Andrew McCarthy. But don’t believe it, youngsters. It wasn’t all lollipops and John Hughes.
Not even the syrupy gaze of nostalgia can help Valley Girl, among the surfeit of teen comedies that passed like kidney stones through movie theaters in the Eighties. Dull, uneven and flat as a [insert teen flick joke here], the picture is a particular letdown coming from well-heeled director Martha Coolidge, whose credits include 1985’s infinitely more entertaining Real Genius. It also marks the gangly film debut of Nicolas Cage, whose hipster loner shtick is a pale version of what he would later bring.
Deborah Foreman stars as Julie, a popular high-school hottie in San Fernando Valley who’s tired of her popular high-school hottie boyfriend (Michael Bowen). In true Capulet fashion, she is drawn to Randy (Cage), an L.A. County punker whose haircut and clothes suggest a certain mousse-addled worldliness … if The Fixx embodied worldiness.
All the language curiosities of the Valley ring especially hollow coming a year after Moon Unit Zappa and daddy Frank had skewered the pampered class in the song “Valley Girl.” By contrast, the comedy and satire (?) of the picture feels like an afterthought. In the final outrage, Valley Girl has the audacity to simply peter out in a wheezy climax at the prom. At least it boasts a bitchin’ soundtrack populated by the likes of The Psychedelic Furs, Modern English, Sparks and The Plimsouls.
Cutting to the Chase with Phil Bacharach 