Risky Business, 1983

I had high expectations for this movie. It is praised as the best early Tom Cruise performance and has a 98% rating on RT. Being a coming of age story I also expected a profound and layered story, instead I got a disappointing superficial movie about money, sex and cars. The main character is an 18 year old boy with nothing else on his mind than sex and getting into college. Every other 18 year old boy in the movie wants just sex. Actually all the characters are completely one dimensional. After being pressured into sleeping with a call girl his entire life starts falling apart. That is at least how he makes it seem, actually he is just scared of getting punished by his parents. This is how low the stakes are in this movie, nearly everything he does is just to avoid a stern talking with his parents. To me this movie really misses the ball. All the dark themes that are mentioned are immediately side stepped. The character that is explored is about the least interesting on of the entire movie. With a plot involving young prostitutes the "problems" of some rich boy seem quite insignificant. As a result the only message this movie carries is to let go every once and a while, to not always think about the consequences of your actions. If the subject matter had been any of the other characters, the message would probably have been the opposite. What does save this film a bit are the great performances delivered by most of the cast and some of the comedy. But this does not make up for the lousy plot and story.

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