This week on The Chris Vernon Show my “Movies” list was Teen Romantic Comedies, based on I Love You, Beth Cooper, which is new (if not quite big) at the box office.
The result is probably the most Eighties-centric list I’ve done. More recent teen comedies are disappointingly broad and I don’t think there was much good that fits the genre from earlier — Beach Blanket Bingo? Love Finds Andy Hardy? The Eighties, of course, were a golden age of sorts for teen cinema.
The list:
1. Say Anything (1989): Cameron Crowe’s first and still best film, about the unlikely summer (and then some?) fling between valedictorian Diane Court (“a brain trapped in the body of a game-show hostess”) and shiftless everyman kickboxer Lloyd Dobler. The leads, as played by Ione Skye and John Cusack, are indelible. But there’s plenty of great stuff around the edges in one of the movies’ very best portraits of high-school (or post-high-school) life, including a terrific Lily Taylor as Lloyd’s best friend and the all-time-classic gas-station-parking-lot scene. A remarkably smart and kind teen comedy.
