Director: George Lucas
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charles Martin Smith
Have I Seen it Before: Yeah, a couple of times.
Did I Like It: It’s another odd duck from Lucas before he reached his true destiny. With THX 1138 (1971), he embraced every nihilistic impulse he must have had as a film student, and here he takes a completely left turn and manages to sing-handedly create the teen comedy genre that John Hughes would continue to perfect in the following decade.
He’s still trying to create interesting soundscapes in his films. THX is a cacophony of an evil future, and this a similarly overwhelming wave of adolescent noise. That instinct started to disappear with Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) and was all but gone by the time Star Wars – Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) rolled around, that had disappeared.
Is it possible between the dourness of THX and the crowd-pleasing qualities of Star Wars, this is the kind of film we could have expected from Lucas when he was happy? I suppose not, as he also later made More American Graffiti (1979). It was not a success and continued to haunt him almost twenty years later when he made an off-hand comment about it during the making-of documentary of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999).
Lucas so thoroughly nails this movie that even though I was a teenager forty years after these Modesto teens moved on to their adult lives, I am filled with nostalgia for my own days. Why doesn’t someone make the film about a bunch of kids running around trying to make a film themselves without any actual resources to back them up.
Guess I should probably make something like that myself.
God, this filmmaker has an ability to make me want to do things outside of my comfort zone. Usually it’s trying to find a heated-plasma sword and hoard religious artifacts. Is there any higher sign of a great filmmaker? Good on ya, Lucas.