EmreBilge Reviews

Can't Buy Me Love (1987)

Best of the genre for its suspenseful story and the messages it gives.

[9/10 · 23 April 2019]

The "nerd" Ronald Miller doesn't appreciate his group of friends and their activities of playing cards and video games. He wants to do something else in his senior year. He craves the life of the "jocks" who date and party which seems to be the privilege of being "popular" at his school. He is also fed up with going "the long route through the library" instead of simply walking "the cool hallway" en route to his class, sitting at the corners of the cafeteria and the "visiting section" at his "own school" to watch his school team's matches. To make matters worse, he has a crush on the head cheerleader, Cindy. Up to this point, your standard youth movie storyline. Assuming that "popularity" would bring him happiness, Ronald decides to offer Cindy $1000 he has been saving mowing the lawn to buy a telescope in return for she pretending for one month that they are dating. His plan goes smoothly at first for quite a good amount of time after which things take a terrible turn.

Congratulations to the director Steve Rash, the writer Michael Swerdlick and the cast. Basically for two unexpected reasons for its genre, this movie is the best of all the youth romantic comedies I have seen. First, the movie has twists and turns in the story and character development which make a variety of endings possible, boost your interest and make you curious in what is going to happen next. Second, the movie does not merely have the generic light-hearted elements of the genre such as parties, relationships, the feud between the different social "layers" in high school.

The remaining paragraphs may contain some spoilers.

The movie gives the youth the life lessons that things you are craving now are not what they seem like, are not really what really matters in life and will not necessarily make you happy in the long term. Falling for short-term cravings and passions interfere with the ability of the brain to process reasonably which leads to dishonesty which leads to regret, loss of dignity and self-respect.

For his age, what Ronald has done can be forgiven especially because, at the end, he realizes his terrible ways even though only after losing the pseudo-popularity and even the former respect as a fellow human and schoolmate, after having rejected Cindy's now sincere (yet, unrealistic in real life) intimacy attempts, having ditched his former friends, so ending up having nowhere to turn to. The showdown between Ronald and the fiercest jock (despite not being the leader), Quint, which was caused by Quint's harassing Kenneth, his former best friend he ditched to be with the popular group, wasn't expected and was dramatic with perhaps long-time consequences for the informal caste system of the school. Ronald was so regretful of going out of himself, his personality, rejecting his friends, his terrible behaviour against his best friend Kenneth and furious at the unjust attitude of the popular group against him, his friends and the other outcasts at the school that he couldn't take it anymore which gave him the courage to stand up to Quint for Kenneth. This and how he handled the rest with Quint is amazing and what restored his dignity and which perhaps raised him to a level of respect which isn't what he had planned with his $1000 at the beginning, but a more dignified, long-term one. He didn't take a step back and vowed to fight Quint if he wouldn't let Kenneth go. Then, he reminded Quint how once they were all friends, Quint fell out of Ronald's tree house and Kenneth picked him up and the two carried him 12 blocks to the hospital and now he wants to kill Kenneth because he's talking to one of the cheerleaders on their "side of the cafeteria". This was a perfect balance of standing up to Quint, showing him that he's not afraid of him and ready to fight if that's the last resort vs. reminding him of how they were once all friends, they even helped him when he was desperate. A perfect concept to invoke the humanity in a fierce person. Ronald now did really grow up, didn't he?

I was also impressed with the brief scene with the African-American teacher stopping the older female school principal from intervening in the fight. He seemed like a far-sighted teacher. He was perfectly cognizant of the situation and the high emotions on the two opposite camps, but still let Ronald express his wounds and insecurities growing inside of him for a long time and let him reach a resolution for himself with perhaps positive consequences for all schoolmates. He seemed cognizant that the fight could lead to a rapprochement and understanding between the two camps and lowering the barriers. I would have liked this character had a longer role in the script.

So what may happen next? Of course jocks will still be jocks, nerds will still be nerds (forget these terms anyway, I am just using these terms as everybody is familiar with them which helps to get my points across). But they will respect each other more. They will acknowledge that nobody is perfect, everybody has ups and downs; that one being good at sports, the other good at lessons, etc., both qualities are noteworthy, complementary and may contribute to accomplishments for their schools and their future. And best of all is when you are humble and appreciate others, your qualities are appreciated in return and you get more respect compared to the case of behaving the other way around. Lessons most of us don't learn at high school, but when we're older. Whether or not Ronald became popular or got Cindy is besides the point and which is what places this movie in a different and special place among its genre. I recommend this movie for adults as well as the youth as adults can also enjoy it. They can also draw lessons as age alone does not necessarily make one mistake-proof and there is always ground for further improvement.

Mischief (1985)

Not much of a story or character development. Slow-paced also. Nice 50s feeling saves the day.

[4/10 · 20 December 2016]

There is not much of a story or character development in this movie. The movie leaves you with no clear idea what the real characters of the 4-5 protagonists really are. It gives you not much of a reason to identify with any of them. We don't learn who these people really are, where and how things had started and what they had been doing with their lives aside from the fact that the nerd used to dream about the hottie and the jock is wandering around with no reason. We can forgive the poor beginning in the hopes of an interesting story would follow. Then when the story doesn't improve and becomes interesting over time, this time you would at least start to expect the movie to move faster and see where it goes. But this doesn't materialize, either. Despite the story is poor, pacing is still slow. There is not even enough conversation between the characters as you would expect in this type of movie. And the other characters aside from the 4-5 protagonists had nothing to contribute. The 50s feeling of the movie which is the background setting, drive-in movie theaters, Eisenhower and James Dean references, the classic cars, dresses, the charm of the two leading actresses and the major supporting actor and the lovely soundtrack saves the movie.

SPOILERS: Especially since the writer didn't bother to build a bond between the nerd and the jock first, the jock's suddenly befriending the nerd and decide in the first day of their acquaintance to shoulder all his problems ends up appearing totally unconvincing. And even though the main theme is suggested to be that, the jock doesn't seem to teach and the nerd doesn't seem to learn and try interesting ways to get the girl to give us an interesting story. So the hottie suddenly liking the nerd and sleeping with him even without any effective effort from the nerd aside from appearing even more bumbling and goofy on the way is also unconvincing. One couldn't understand why and how the hottie would go out with the nerd here. A guy with no confidence, no looks. Not even academic record or nervous but sincere advances by him towards her which the hottie might appear to find cute like we see on many nerd&hottie movies. And it's a pity that even after sleeping with her, even though he still likes her, the nerd still couldn't get some confidence to start a relationship with her, so remains passive and so get dumped by her despite she had asked him out for the prom.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Waste of a movie which in fact had had to much potential to be a perfect one.

[3/10 · 30 April 2015]

I just wonder what big deal it is shooting a movie as long as 3 long hours when you do not have much of a story to tell. Do they sell tickets with higher prices when the movie is longer, forcing 2 and even more time of debauchery scenes on people? By doing so, they end up having a boringly slow-paced movie without telling anything. One gets tired of going over and over the same thing again and again, waiting for the original story to start which doesn't seem to come until after at least one and half hour through the movie. And when you start to think it is finally there, it doesn't take much time to realize that the same crap comes back after only some minutes of a real story. That's when you lose much of your hope and patience for the movie.

The whole story is about a man, Jordan Belford (Leonardo DiCaprio) with little to no moral values becoming rich by stock fraud defrauding people of their hard-won money. They could have comfortably told that the men and his crooks are people without moral values at most in 30 minutes. They could have used the other time displaying how he grew up dreaming becoming rich, what jobs he had had before either out of the stock market or in it, but before having his own business, how he started the the stock broker business, what lows and highs he had in the business, the response of and impact of big stock broker companies, their competition, maybe threats, partnership offers and especially how he had the attention of law enforcement agencies, his trial, his defense, the verdict on him, how his victims financially suffered because of their engagement with him, etc.. Real parts from Jordan's real life and/or some fiction added on it.

The thing is the producer and the director seems to not have really felt like having a story with many interesting parts developed over time and flowing with an acceptable pacing. They must have thought that people just would expect to watch a lot of debauchery and would get excited about that only. I think the not deserved high rating of the movie is because mostly people who are interested in this part voted for it here. Yet, the rating of a movie doesn't give you much of an idea whether you will like it or not. Because your liking is shaped according to your own interests, not others' even if the others are a large group of people.

The bad thing here is they didn't have to have this movie title and this movie topic which reminds people of the stock broker and finance businesses to shoot this. If they had got a relevant movie title and movie topic, only people who are interested in lots of debauchery and vulgar language would have watched it and so much less people would have spoken negatively on it. When you have a financial feeling in your movie title and movie topic, lots of more serious movie buffs who are interested in a serious and interesting story on the business world would go watch it. Plus, they wouldn't have minded some humor in it as long as it supports and pushes the original story development and enables you to have some fun as well.

Now as for my rating; not 1, but 3 for two reasons: 1. Energetic and convincing acting from main protagonists starting with Jordan and his inspirational speeches to his employees (ignoring that he is inspiring not for a respectful cause, but fraud. 2. Even though limited, the questioning of Jordan by law enforcement officials and interesting conversing between the two sides including the one in his yacht.

Spoiler for such a short scene from here (no general insight on how the story goes): I would like to touch down on one short scene which is interesting and which tells a lot about fraudsters' minds. In the scene; during the interaction between Jordan and one of his female employees, Jordan tells her he gave her an advance a few times more than she asked for when she first started the job, because he believed in her. There appears to be good chemistry between the two there and both seem moved. And Jordan then turns to his crowd of employees and tell them all that he also believes each and every one of them. All of them seem moved and become emotional. Watching this scene, I could not help but think that there might be people in this world who so do not mind their illegal activity of cheating people of billions of their hard-won money to the extent that they are able to pretend they are not really even aware that what they are proud of and moved for is really nothing other than cheating and deceiving people, enriching themselves with average people's hard-won money. They pretend and can even delude themselves that they are decent working people with moral values. More and more of such scenes which would make you think about different aspects of life and the business, finance world would have made the movie much more interesting.