Can I start by saying that there is something seriously wrong when you can watch a movie for a good five minutes and be totally unaware that it is, instead of the present day, set in 1987, because all the 20 year olds in it are dressed exactly like any hipster 20 year old you'd see on the street today? (You damn kids develop your own fashion trends***, and oh yeah, get offa my lawn.) It took the appearance of Ronald Reagan addressing the nation on TV for me to realize this was in fact set in the 80s. I also watched the entire movie to the credits before I realized that the female lead is in fact that chick from the Twilight movie, but I'll chalk that up to my recent usage of prescription drugs. She looked awfully pretty in Adventureland and I can't really swear to that from Twilight, but maybe the whole sparkly vampire thing distracted me from her good looks.
But, speaking of which, while the fashions in Adventureland were faithful to the mid-80s as I remember them, it always cracks me up that in these modern day movies and TV shows set in that period, they won't *really* give the female lead/hot girl actual 80s hair. Supporting characters, sure, but it's as if the stylists believe that no one today could get past the horror of teased bangs to actually find a woman pretty, so they cheat. Trust me, in the real 1987, Em's hair would not have been the tastefully slightly-wavy 'do she has in the movie.
Okay, sartorial issues out of the way, let's discuss what else is missing in 80s verite. While they get the extremely casual attitude towards drinking and driving, the sexual mores, and the omnipresent pot usage right, they're missing a vice. Smoking. Other than one character who smokes a pipe as an affectation, none of these 20-somethings smoke in this movie. In the real 1987, that'd be unrealistic to the extreme.
So, what'd you think of the actual movie, Andrea? Oh, yeah. That. It was good. Light and pleasant entertainment. Worth renting.
xoxo
***If Mr Indemnity is reading this, he's gonna call foul, because he knows there's this little waitress at the Gulu that I have a girl-crush on simply because every time I go in there, she's wearing something that I myself wore in 1987, and she's adorable. I'm always, "Oh! I had shoes just like that!" and "OMG, I had those jeans! I wonder if they're vintage..." Of course, we did not pair those fashion items with tattoos and facial piercings in 1987, but close enough.
2 comments:
On the smoking. True, but the 1987 version of smoking is bupkis compared, say, to watching "The Thin Man," or some other bit of late 1930s diversion. The first decision Nick and Nora Charles had to make each day was which to reach for first: a cigarette or a highball. That sort of thing was going on well into my teens, so much so that non-smokers were thought to be Commies or deathly ill...or deathly ill Commies.
Oh, yeah, look at ""Mad Men. The first season of that was such a shock to the system with all the constant smoking and boozing *at the office*.
Sorta ironic that so much of that advertising in the 50s and 60s, Mad Men era, was targeted to "housewives", trying to sell them uber-cleaning products so they could spend their days making everything in the house sparkle (or feeling inadequate if they weren't), and all I can think of is, how did anyone get anything clean and non-stinky when they were all chain smoking in their houses day and night? Did we *need* lemon-scented Pledge to be invented just to cover up the old cigarette stench?
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