Fast Forward is a rare dance musical where the dancing is actually enjoyable to watch, and there’s not too much gringe here in the form of melodramatic teen agony that makes many of the movies in this genre typically hard to watch.
Coupled with pretty ok soundtrack this (at least to my eye a bit Michael Jackson inspired) dance movie is also generally quite enjoyable, and I found myself rooting for the small town ensemble trying to make it in the big city.
80s-o-meter: 81%
Total: 74%
A major misfire by Menahem Golan, The Apple is a very bizarre musical taking place in the distant future of 1994.
This is, of course the future of the 70s, with everyone sporting weird 70s hair and grey scifi suits with padded shoulders. And the movie is just awful.
The Apple fails in the musical front as well, and feels like something out of a cheapo Bollywood movie. I know this is one of those so bad it’s good movie for some, but I really did not find anything to like here.
80s-o-meter: 31%
Total: 3%
Something of a cult classic due to it’s connections with Elfman brothers and Oingo Boingo, Forbidden Zone is a wild and wacky ride into a world of sheer eccentricity.
The movie is shot in black and white films, and takes visual clues from the early cinema and cartoons with psychedelic look & feel to them and mixes it all up with musical numbers, some of which are imaginative, while others feel like the cast is just mouthing a song like in a billion Tiktok videos out there.
While I’m a big fan of wackiness, problem for me with Forbidden Zone is that it tries way, waaaay to hard to be weird at all times, as in ”hey everybody look at me I’m so cuckoo”. This along with some inane humor like everybody dry humping each other really got old and tired fast. I do applaud the movie for trying something a bit different, and succeeding in capturing a very special kind of mood to it – but it really isn’t my cup of tea.
80s-o-meter: 2%
Total: 9%
I’ve now watched the majority of the 80s hiphop movies, and the verdict is that there’s two definite time capsules of the era that no-one interested in the culture should skip. The other one is Beat Street, and Krush Groove here is the other.
Set in the bustling New York City scene, the film revolves around the trials and tribulations of Russell Walker, a young music producer trying to make a mark in the fiercely competitive world of hip-hop. With an impressive ensemble cast featuring iconic artists like Run-D.M.C. & Jam Master Jay, LL Cool J, Kurtis Blow, Sheila E. and Beastie Boys, the movie pulsates with the rhythm of the era’s hip-hop music.
While both films capture the essence of hip-hop, Krush Groove leans towards entertainment and the music business side of the movement and celebrates the emergence of hip-hop as a commercial powerhouse, encapsulating the rise of hip-hop in the mainstream.
80s-o-meter: 94%
Total: 95%
Released only seven months after the first one, I was expecting Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo to be more of the same cringe and badness than the first installation, so I really, really wasn’t looking forward to watching this sequel.
To my positive surprise this second part puts much more effort into the musical dance numbers and makes them much more entertaining in general. Also, the production team seems to have found much more street dance talent this time around, much for the benefit of the movie.
The movie is in many ways much more over the top and there seems to even be a plot line this time around, and I have to admit that I actually enjoyed watching this one.
80s-o-meter: 92%
Total: 75%
Ah, the youth musicals.. Cue an endless source of cringe.
This goes with Breakin’ as well. This depiction of a young rich girl wanting to get into street wise dancing team and the breakdancing street people is a non-stop stream of life being oh-so-hard.
Dance numbers that might’ve saved the movie are quite underwhelming, and the body popping demonstrated by the leading duo looks like as if I was improvising in front of a camera. This is to say, it’s no good.
80s-o-meter: 81%
Total: 22%
Look, I don’t even pretend to know enough movie business to understand how something like Dance Goddess gets green lighted and funded, but now that it exists, you can congratulate yourself as you belong to about ten people in the world who know of it.
Sometimes an idea can sound good on paper, but fail on the execution – but I honestly can’t fathom how a concept of an American Bollywood musical has ever gotten enough traction and people backing it up for it to get made. The end result is perhaps the thinnest amount of plot ever seen on the silver screen, coupled with Bollywood style dancing and music acts, performed by American amateur actors. While I’m fully aware that musicals aren’t exactly know for the stellar scripts, at least they usually have either the singing or dancing going for them. Dance Goddess has neither.
At the day of writing this, Dance Goddess has no reviews in Imdb, and only 13 ratings averaging to 3.4 – meaning there was probably more people in the production team than those who’ve seen the movie to date.
80s-o-meter: 70%
Total: 3%
Whoa, Dennis Quaid was ripped back in 1983.
Pretty much unlike what I expected, Tough Enough is a boxing movie about a country singer that takes part in a Toughman amateur boxing competition to make the ends meet. This different approach and the human story behind it all is the side of Tough Enough that I enjoyed.
What I did not enjoy though was the endless staged boxing matches with random fighters that quite frankly weren’t really that interesting. The movie has all the usual shortcomings and dramatic structure than all the sports movies, which makes the movie also a bit less interesting if you know the formula. Ultimately I feel it’s Quaid who single handedly carries this movie through, transforming something quite mediocre to a passable movie experience.
80s-o-meter: 81%
Total: 61%
Upon the recent reviewing of Beat Street, I was expecting a cringeworthy musical with gangs rivalling in 80s rappity rap battles and being all melodramatic and their life being oh so hard. Turned out Beat Street was nothing like this, but quite a solid hiphop movie of the 80s, and Rappin’ is the cringy one to avoid.
Or, to fully embrace, if you can appreciate the pissy poor plot of Mario Van Peebles getting out of juvie, being rivalled by a gang leader straight out of Grease musical, battling the big corporation trying to take over their hood and being pushed of doing a rap record and winning a rap competition, because he is so naturally good in the art of rappity rap.
But, like everybody else he would prefer to just be grim, distant, poetic and to suffer – and make the audience suffer with him.
80s-o-meter: 90%
Total: 31%
The first thing that strikes from The Competition is the love and devotion the team shows for its subject, competitive piano playing. The actors have been instructed and trained carefully, perform their roles as piano virtuosos very well and at least for me superficially the way the competitions are carried out seems quite plausible, and without those facepalm moments.
Although not one of the movies he is most known for, Richard Dreyfuss once again reminds me why he is one of my favourite actors of the era. Amy Irving whom I recently saw in Crossing Delancey is a good pair for Dreyfuss, and them getting involved in the strange mix of mutual interest, friendship and rivalry does not seem too far fetched.
The Competition sidesteps the obvious pitfalls of ending up boring (due to its classical music theme that’s not actually thrilling), or being untrue to the same theme, and for this reason it’s a success.
80s-o-meter: 65%
Total: 74%
A fictional tale loosely based on African-American jazz musicians’ life and influence in late 50s Paris, Round Midnight feels an exercise too keen on substance and being accepted as a cool cat piece of French cinema.
Although I understand the intention for going for an atmosphere that can be sold to American cinema goers, it all frankly feels far too clichéd to be taken seriously: dark, smoke-filled rooms, a gloomy and dark Paris where it always rains, and characters (despite of battling with serious personal problems, like alcoholism) that feel naïve caricatures instead of actual persons.
The musical pieces composed by Herbie Hancock and performed by a bunch of skilled musicians are the best aspects of the movie, hands down. As I enjoyed the jazz pieces, but not so much the interludes between them, I could not but to think that for the selected fictional style of the movie it would’ve been better to go all in and make Round Midnight a full musical instead.
80s-o-meter: 17%
Total: 54%
Written as a vehicle for Luciano Pavarotti, Yes, Giorgio portrays a fictional tenor called Giorgio touring in America.
Giorgio is a big man child with superstition to ever singing at Metropolitan Opera, and so he desperately seeks the love and care of a female doctor. A world class singer, in private life he is something of a half-grown, with the inner life of a 5-year old: he throws tantrums when things don’t go his way, and gets into food fight with the opposite sex.
The only thing Yes, Giorgio has going for it are its opera numbers. But really – you’d be much better off watching any of Pavarotti’s opera performances on VHS, than to sit through this drivel.
80s-o-meter: 71%
Total: 9%
What makes Torch Song Trilogy an above the average movie about gays (and drag) is that is was conceived and lead acted by Harvey Fierstein, an openly gay actor and playwright. This results in a movie that does not aim to explain, sugar coat nor view the gay community through hetero lenses.
A result is refreshing take that portrays all of its characters and their shortcomings, insecurities and sometimes even sheer pettiness in a realistic fashion. Fierstein is a wonderful actor, and a persona on and off stage and his character that often goes from gorgeous to goofy in one scene, depending on the camera direction and his mood swing makes for one of the more interesting and multi-faceted personas seen on screen.
What I did not like about the movie though is how it’s divided in three acts between different eras and lovers as I’d much rather had the movie concentrating on just one time frame in the lifeline of this character.
80s-o-meter: 60%
Total: 74%
Sylvester Stallone (of all people) co-wrote and directed the sequel to the 1977 landmark movie Saturday Night Fever – and it remains one of the few misfires in his career.
Staying Alive picks the story up years later of the original storyline, as Tony Manero (John Travolta) is now trying to make it big in the Broadway. Akin to many musicals of the era, it’s a struggle of getting noticed from a fleet of talented dancers.
The original’s heavy disco approach along with the killer soundtrack is what made it a phenomenon, when again Staying Alive is an early 80s fast food take on the subject; light drama is constantly mixed up with lengthy musical numbers, and neither one have enough memorable aspects to really stick with the viewer for more than a minute or two.
80s-o-meter: 84%
Total: 51%
A well known misstep in the career of Francis Ford Coppola, One from the Heart – a drama, romance and a musical – does not work on a paper, much less as a movie.
While the initial conflict between the leads in relatable, even interesting, everything that follows is implausible and very unrelatable, and it’s especially the ending that feels very unfulfilling. Some of the choreography is nice, and songs by Tom Waits are nice, but wasted with the movie.
What works though is the whole Las Vegas set including downtown, street view and a desert scene meticulously build inside a studio, and helps to create that surreal, movie like look and feel that I love.
80s-o-meter: 81%
Total: 51%
Back in 1983 Rick Springfield made a horrific career move: instead of taking part in the landmark movie The Right Stuff he opted for Hard to Hold.
Rick plays the world’s biggest rock star who is chased by the crowds and lust after by the all the women in the world, so he finds the only one that doesn’t like him and wants to make her his girlfriend no matter what it takes. I know that musicians can sometime ego trip a little, but Hard to Hold is one horrible, egomanical project so bad that it single handedly ended Springfield’s film career for a good decade.
It’s a painful thing to watch. All the drama in the movie feels super theatric as well as artificial, and Rick Springfield and Janet Eilber (seen licking Springfield’s throat on the movie poster) make together the least interesting couple I’ve seen to date.
80s-o-meter: 89%
Total: 2%
A country drama-comedy featuring Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, Songwriter depicts Nelson as Doc Jenkins, a singer-songwriter tired of his life on the road and away from his son.
While the movie did not end up in my pile of movies to watch again, I did like how the movie depicts its subjects realistically, without neither glorifying or vilifying them; these country starts enjoy loose women, driving nice convertibles and a round of golf as much they enjoy putting on a show.
The musical talent of Kristofferson and Nelson make the movie one of the easier musicals to stomach.
80s-o-meter: 60%
Total: 67%
The never-heard-before Delivery Boys is a comedy with a typical problem of the team not having a proper focus. This results as the movie being an uneven collection of adolescent sex comedy, a musical and a serious film about break dancing, as if it was patched together from the leftovers of three different movies.
The comedy bits are of your typical lowest common denominator type, with men dressing as women and horny men then trying to have sex with them, and the breakdance and training parts of the movie are much more interesting to watch.
Delivery Boys would’ve worked much better as a showcase to the 1985 New York and to its breakdance / hiphop scene with the comedy bits somehow related to that theme.
80s-o-meter: 85%
Total: 29%
Somebody please explain me why movies like Hairspray exist.
Just kidding – I know, I know. They’re there to give a dose of nostalgia for those long for the bygone days when the sun always shone and the colors were much more vivid. You can spot useless nostalgic movie by reimagining it to the current day and figuring out if the concept still holds up.
Hairspray was definitely my cup of tea, even despite its favorable anti-segregation message.
80s-o-meter: 3%
Total: 4%
Zoot Suit is the lavish and showy outfit with high-waist, wide-legged trousers and a ridilously long coat with wide, padded shoulders, coupled with a overlong watch chain dangling below the knee, and worn mostly by the youngsters of African-American, Latino, Italian American, and Filipino descent in the 1940s. What makes Zoot Suit interesting is its rebellious statement of self expression and the showiness of it by using excessive amount of materials, making them a luxury items and the way to show the neighbourhood (and the ladies) how much of a cool cat you were.
This is where the interesting part of Zoot Suit ends. The movie itself is an adaptation of a 1979 musical of the same name with possibly the worst music I’ve heard and the movie itself is shot with theatrical setting as if it was a play, likely to underline the fairy tale like nature of the movie, but to me it just did not work, give a take a few scenes. What worked though was the narrator and the ’Zoot Suit Spirit’ played by Edward James Olmos.
Like most of the musicals, Zoot Suit has a limited, but die hard fan base that rates it up there with the actual musical timeless classics.
80s-o-meter: 3%
Total: 18%