A Night In The Life Of Jimmy Reardon
A review for the film I watched last night which was on my list because Matthew Perry was in it.
The film was:
A Night In The Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988)
Ok, so this was *so* totally not the film I was expecting to watch. Look at that DVD cover and what sort of film do you imagine? I think you could be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that what you were about to experience was a late 80s teen movie set in a high school and probably involving jocks. And a prom. Or something. *Not* what this film is about. The film starts by displaying a Aldous Huxley quote: "Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves"
It was at this point I realised I may have been wrong in my assumptions. Actually, this isn't true. At this point I just figured I was in for a particularly pretentious 80s teen movie. Turns out, that contrary to what the cover picture would have you believe, this film is actually set in the 60s and is based on the book Aren't You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye? by William Richert, who directed the film.
It stars River Phoenix as a 17 year old who has just graduated high school and is getting ready to go off to college. Well, he is supposedly 17, but he looks about 12, which gets particularly skeevy later on as we shall see. His family is... well... if he was British, he'd be lower middle class. Not much money, his father went to college and has a steady white collar job. His friends (Matthew Perry among them) are obscenely rich. The living in mansions with tennis courts kinds of rich. It's at this point I should point out that the first thing we see of Matthew Perry is he is playing pool or snooker or billiards or something. I didn't exactly notice because he was wearing a fez. For no adequately explored reason. He's just. Wearing a fez. The fez distracted me so much that I didn't at the time notice just how very very *young* Matt Perry looks. You know how young he looks in early Friends? Well this was six years before that. Photographic proof you say? Very well.
So, the plot. Well. River Phoenix is going steady with Obscenely Rich girl Lisa. But he has slept with a girl who has conned him out of money by pretending she needed an abortion so he now no longer has the $110 he needs to go to the college of his choice. His father will only pay if he goes to his Alma Mater. I think there is a thing where he wants to be a poet and his dad want him to go to business school but it's not very clear. So he decides that rather than do that, he'll go and... er grow pineapples in Hawaii because that's where his girlfriend is going. Except that he doesn't have any money. And his father won't give him any. So now, instead he has to raise $80ish dollars for a plane fare.
Oh yeah, he has also been having... some sort of fuck buddies relationship with another of their obscenely rich friends, because... uh... I dunno actually. Possibly because she likes kinky sex and he is a randy fucker. Well... slightly kinky role playing anyway. This is rather skeevy because seriously, he looks 12 and she doesn't look much older. So River runs around trying to get this money before his girlfriend leaves. Then his mother asks hims to drive home a friend of hers of whom his father Disapproves. He is not happy about this because he is about to go out with his girlfriend and it's the night before she leaves. So obviously, he drives the friend home and has sex with her instead of seeing his girlfriend. As you do. He then goes to pick up said gf, only to discover that she's got sick of waiting and went with the sickeningly handsome and rich boy next door. So he storms the party they're at and they have a heated argument. She then decides that even though he was hours late she should forgive him and follow through with her plan to "go all the way". However, he can't get it up, due to having all the sex with his mum's friend. She calls him on it, revealing that she knew he was a cheating douchebag and yet stayed with him and then decides, she planned to lose her virginity that night, and lose her virginity she will, by jingo!And she doesn't care who with. So she flounces off to Boy Next Door. River gets all annoyed because, god dammit, there is only room for one cheating ho in this relationship and it will damn well be him! In his fit of annoyance he accidentally crashes his Dad's car which causes him to discover that the reason his dad disapproved of the friend was that he was having an affair with her. This somehow makes him bond with his dad because... err... maybe because they've had sex with the same woman and if that's the case it's just wrong. But anyway he decides to do what his dad wants and go to the business school. The end.
*shrug* I'm not really sure. There was what was attempting to be a subplot about him being a performance poet sort of thing, and I guess in the directors cut more is made of it but it isn't really mentioned.
I can't believe I missed one of the most notable bits of this film: it's narrated by River Phoenix's character. In this really weird half pretentious nobend half film noir detective way. It's just kind of odd.
So, conclusions? A very weird little film. Not what I expected at all. River Phoenix is good, but looks far too young to be having that much sex. And Matt Perry needs to be in it more.
The film was:
A Night In The Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988)
Ok, so this was *so* totally not the film I was expecting to watch. Look at that DVD cover and what sort of film do you imagine? I think you could be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that what you were about to experience was a late 80s teen movie set in a high school and probably involving jocks. And a prom. Or something. *Not* what this film is about. The film starts by displaying a Aldous Huxley quote: "Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves"
It was at this point I realised I may have been wrong in my assumptions. Actually, this isn't true. At this point I just figured I was in for a particularly pretentious 80s teen movie. Turns out, that contrary to what the cover picture would have you believe, this film is actually set in the 60s and is based on the book Aren't You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye? by William Richert, who directed the film.
It stars River Phoenix as a 17 year old who has just graduated high school and is getting ready to go off to college. Well, he is supposedly 17, but he looks about 12, which gets particularly skeevy later on as we shall see. His family is... well... if he was British, he'd be lower middle class. Not much money, his father went to college and has a steady white collar job. His friends (Matthew Perry among them) are obscenely rich. The living in mansions with tennis courts kinds of rich. It's at this point I should point out that the first thing we see of Matthew Perry is he is playing pool or snooker or billiards or something. I didn't exactly notice because he was wearing a fez. For no adequately explored reason. He's just. Wearing a fez. The fez distracted me so much that I didn't at the time notice just how very very *young* Matt Perry looks. You know how young he looks in early Friends? Well this was six years before that. Photographic proof you say? Very well.
So, the plot. Well. River Phoenix is going steady with Obscenely Rich girl Lisa. But he has slept with a girl who has conned him out of money by pretending she needed an abortion so he now no longer has the $110 he needs to go to the college of his choice. His father will only pay if he goes to his Alma Mater. I think there is a thing where he wants to be a poet and his dad want him to go to business school but it's not very clear. So he decides that rather than do that, he'll go and... er grow pineapples in Hawaii because that's where his girlfriend is going. Except that he doesn't have any money. And his father won't give him any. So now, instead he has to raise $80ish dollars for a plane fare.
Oh yeah, he has also been having... some sort of fuck buddies relationship with another of their obscenely rich friends, because... uh... I dunno actually. Possibly because she likes kinky sex and he is a randy fucker. Well... slightly kinky role playing anyway. This is rather skeevy because seriously, he looks 12 and she doesn't look much older. So River runs around trying to get this money before his girlfriend leaves. Then his mother asks hims to drive home a friend of hers of whom his father Disapproves. He is not happy about this because he is about to go out with his girlfriend and it's the night before she leaves. So obviously, he drives the friend home and has sex with her instead of seeing his girlfriend. As you do. He then goes to pick up said gf, only to discover that she's got sick of waiting and went with the sickeningly handsome and rich boy next door. So he storms the party they're at and they have a heated argument. She then decides that even though he was hours late she should forgive him and follow through with her plan to "go all the way". However, he can't get it up, due to having all the sex with his mum's friend. She calls him on it, revealing that she knew he was a cheating douchebag and yet stayed with him and then decides, she planned to lose her virginity that night, and lose her virginity she will, by jingo!And she doesn't care who with. So she flounces off to Boy Next Door. River gets all annoyed because, god dammit, there is only room for one cheating ho in this relationship and it will damn well be him! In his fit of annoyance he accidentally crashes his Dad's car which causes him to discover that the reason his dad disapproved of the friend was that he was having an affair with her. This somehow makes him bond with his dad because... err... maybe because they've had sex with the same woman and if that's the case it's just wrong. But anyway he decides to do what his dad wants and go to the business school. The end.
*shrug* I'm not really sure. There was what was attempting to be a subplot about him being a performance poet sort of thing, and I guess in the directors cut more is made of it but it isn't really mentioned.
I can't believe I missed one of the most notable bits of this film: it's narrated by River Phoenix's character. In this really weird half pretentious nobend half film noir detective way. It's just kind of odd.
So, conclusions? A very weird little film. Not what I expected at all. River Phoenix is good, but looks far too young to be having that much sex. And Matt Perry needs to be in it more.