The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 253 Days to go: 255
Movie #124: Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Girls Just Want to Have Fun was my absolute favorite movie when I was a kid. I watched it all the time. I wanted to be Janey (Sarah Jessica Parker), but I also wanted to be Lynne (Helen Hunt). (I’m more like Lynne — “I’m an okay dancer, but what I lack in substance I make up for in style.” — and didn’t even realize I’d named a character after her in a fiction piece of mine until after the fact, so she’s kind of in my subconscious, but I’m also fascinated with people whose birthdays are “the same as mine, almost,” so Janey’s in there too. “You belong on Dance TV, and of course so do I!”) I was also younger than Maggie (Shannen Doherty), so I looked up to her too and totally understood her desire to grow up and be womanly. (“Do you really think I’m Punk!? That’s outrageous! I mean, it’s not as cool as New Wave, but it’s a lot better than pre-teen.”) I also was in love with Jeff (Lee Montgomery) and didn’t even mind Drew (Jonathan Silverman) or his Tune-In Tokyo game of sexual assault.
The movie is about a dance show — Dance TV — filmed in Chicago holding a contest for a new couple. Janey goes without her military father’s (the late character actor Ed Lauter) permission, makes the finals, and gets paired up with supposed bad-boy Jeff (“I don’t need a contest to tell me I’m a good dancer.”) — he drives a motorcycle! (“It’s the safest thing you’ll ever have between your legs.”) There’s some huge rivalry with this crazy, spoiled rich girl, but really the greatest thing about that is how Janey, Lynne and Maggie invite all these punks and weightlifters and acrobats to crash the bitch’s “Debutante Ball,” as if that’s still a thing.
There’s all sorts of really horrible music that I love; the film doesn’t even have much of a connection to the song it gets its title from, save a knock-off cover of it in the film, a tiny snippet of the real track just before the final freeze frame, and Cyndi Lauper uncredited in a diner as one of the punks. There’s also a horrible knock-off cover of “Dancing in the Streets,” plus a bunch of other songs nobody has ever heard before or since. (Except me. I sing along to every nameless one.)
There’s also lots and lots of barely adequate dancing that at the time I thought was just the coolest ever. I feel like this movie should be remade almost shot-for-shot (because it’s mostly perfect and I love it) except with really great dancers. It might not have much of an audience outside of me, but I think it would be worth it all the same. Who’s in?
Viable Option 