#61 Valley Girl
Year: 1983
Director: Martha Coolidge
MPAA Rating: R
Epic Co-stars: Elizabeth Daily, aka Dotty from Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Running Time: 99 minsCage Time: 50%
Cage Kills:
Cage Flip-outs: 1
Skyler's Review: Valley Girl is a modern spin on the Romeo and Juliet story. Elizabeth Daily plays Julia, and our hero Nicolas Cage is Randy. Randy and Julia.
Julia is a popular girl from The Valley has an on-again-off-again boyfriend whom is the the most popular dude in this school. He is terrible, and treats her terribly, but he is the coolest so she chooses to stay with him for the status of it. One day, Julia and her friends are chilling at the beach Julia catches a glimpse of the rockin' bod of Randy. He doesn't seem to notice/care that she is there, while clandestinely observing her and strategizing with his buddy Fred (who represents Mercutio). Randy puts on a show by flexing and looking awesome but making it look like he thinks no one is watching (like this is normal behavior). Fred finds out about a party in The Valley, and Fred and Randy decide to go to meet some chicks. It just so happens that Julia is at this very party.
Randy falls in love with Julia immediately, but is thrown out of the party by Julia's boyfriend whom feels threatened. Randy sneaks back into the party by hiding in the bathroom until Julia needs to use the facility. Randy then jumps out of the shower and asks her to ditch the party and go with him to have some "real fun." Randy takes her to a music bar and shows his true punk side. Julia falls in love with Randy and has to decide whether to do the socially prudent thing (date the cool guy she hates) or follow her heart (date Randy). I won't spoil the end for you, but I can bet you can guess the end.
When the movie begins, the Romeo & Juliet thing is pretty subtle, so we felt pretty clever once we figured it out. But as the movie goes on, they start to beat you over the head about it, including a large ROMEO & JULIET on a playbill for a show in town.
The highlight of this movie is that Nic Cage shaved his chest hair into the shape of a bird, no joke. When he has his shirt off at the beach you can see that he shaved his chest hair down from his neck, but what is left looks like a majestic phoenix. Good stuff.
Toward the end, during the obligatory prom scene, Josie Cotton and her band are on stage and sing the entire "Johnny are you Queer?" song. That was a nice touch.
Julia is a popular girl from The Valley has an on-again-off-again boyfriend whom is the the most popular dude in this school. He is terrible, and treats her terribly, but he is the coolest so she chooses to stay with him for the status of it. One day, Julia and her friends are chilling at the beach Julia catches a glimpse of the rockin' bod of Randy. He doesn't seem to notice/care that she is there, while clandestinely observing her and strategizing with his buddy Fred (who represents Mercutio). Randy puts on a show by flexing and looking awesome but making it look like he thinks no one is watching (like this is normal behavior). Fred finds out about a party in The Valley, and Fred and Randy decide to go to meet some chicks. It just so happens that Julia is at this very party.
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| Randy (Romeo) with his friend (Mercutio) at a party trying to get chicks from The Valley. |
Randy falls in love with Julia immediately, but is thrown out of the party by Julia's boyfriend whom feels threatened. Randy sneaks back into the party by hiding in the bathroom until Julia needs to use the facility. Randy then jumps out of the shower and asks her to ditch the party and go with him to have some "real fun." Randy takes her to a music bar and shows his true punk side. Julia falls in love with Randy and has to decide whether to do the socially prudent thing (date the cool guy she hates) or follow her heart (date Randy). I won't spoil the end for you, but I can bet you can guess the end.
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| Nicolas Cage as Randy looks as dashing as always. Elizabeth Daly looks OK. Maybe the style of beauty has changed. Look at that hair! (Cage, not Daly) |
When the movie begins, the Romeo & Juliet thing is pretty subtle, so we felt pretty clever once we figured it out. But as the movie goes on, they start to beat you over the head about it, including a large ROMEO & JULIET on a playbill for a show in town.
The highlight of this movie is that Nic Cage shaved his chest hair into the shape of a bird, no joke. When he has his shirt off at the beach you can see that he shaved his chest hair down from his neck, but what is left looks like a majestic phoenix. Good stuff.
 |
| Oh, and by the way, Dotty from PeeWee Herman's Great Adventure is in this film. |
Toward the end, during the obligatory prom scene, Josie Cotton and her band are on stage and sing the entire "Johnny are you Queer?" song. That was a nice touch.
Movie quotability:
- "What is this movie rated? What are the chances of me seeing these teenage girls naked?" -James
- "Why don't you just punish me like Stacy's parents do?" "Bad karma."
- I just came over here to say I love you. (She breaks up w/him). I know what this is! Your fucking friends! Fuck you! Fuck off. For sure. Like totally.
- No rearview mirror in the student driver car.
CAGEamatic
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Cinematic
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|---|---|---|
| Skyler |
Outstanding
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Acceptable
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| Shauna |  |  |
| James |
4.08/5.00
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3.46/5.00
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| Martine |
!On the computer in the CAGE!
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4 comments:
What is up with this blog? No movie reviews posted to the front page since #14 Amos & Andrew and if I dig into the January posts I find four new reviews, but the numbers are all messed up with a duplicated #14, two listed as #16, and a #18 but no #15 or #17. Been in the cage a little too long?
Lacking proper guidance on what movie was next I popped open the Netflix listing for Cage and grabbed the oldest movie on the list that wasn't available for instance watching. I must say that I'm glad to have this one out of the way as I feel like I'm probably a year or twenty older than the target audience of teenagers.
According to the the movie description this is a "Romeo-and-Juliet-like romance" which sets some lofty expectations, but I saw few parallels between the two other than it involved a boy, a girl, sneaking into a ball, and driving past a movie theater that was showing Romeo and Juliet. The theater in that driving-through-town-while-yelling-at-people scene was also showing The Rocky Horror Picture Show which it probably has more in common with.
Most notable was Cage wearing a US flag pin on his lapel decades before it became standard issue for politicians. Atta boy. I counted one Cage flip-out and no kills or deaths despite the promise of being like Romeo and Juliet. There are some hints of the voice he used in Peggy Sue Got Married which makes it really hard to like his character. On the plus side, I give it a T&A score of 1.5 stars (out of 5).
The Nic Cage movie matrix correctly places this movie as slightly mental rubbish, though I'd have moved it down and to the left a little, just above Snake Eyes.
We were quite impressed with Nic's chest hair. We were amused by how 80's this film was: the mullets, the bad fashion, and the good music. We were, however, less impressed with the fact that this film wasn't like Romeo & Juliet at all, despite being led to believe that it would be. A plague on both your houses!
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#56 Valley Girl (1983) My DVD Rewatch, from years ago. Still Great!
Correction: Deborah Foreman plays Julie - not Elizabeth Daily.
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