Ever see an old movie and think it seems like the work of one well-known creative type only to learn that person had nothing to do with it? Shane Black wrote so many Christmas-set action movies, it’s easy to forget he had nothing to do with Die Hard. But as I sat down to watch Risky Business for the first time, there was a part of me that wondered if anyone ever thought this was a John Hughes movie. It’s set in a Chicago suburb, the teenage protagonist seems to be very well off, there’s a classic car that the kids shouldn’t take out, and most of the plot deals with teenage love and sex.
Granted, I don’t think Hughes ever made a movie this, shall we say, sexual, and it does feature a young Tom Cruise in his starmaking turn, but still, it had a lot of those Hughes-style elements.
Oddly enough, this one was also part of Turner Classic Movies’s “fashionable cinema” selection, but I guess there’s no costume in this movie more memorable than what Cruise’s Joel Goodsen was wearing when he slides into the living room of his house in his underwear, a shirt, and his socks to dance to Bob Segar. He’s home alone for a few days, an honor student trying to get into Princeton to study business. However, he’d also like to get laid. After a disaster when his friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) calls a drag queen, he eventually screws up his courage to call a call girl named Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) for some sex. She, of course, wants to be paid, but he needs to go to the bank to get the money. When he returns, he finds his mother’s beloved glass egg missing.
Man, 80s materialism really was awful, wasn’t it?
However, Joel has to get that egg back. Lana, once Joel gets to know her, is rather nice to him as the two seem to fall in love, but she has her own baggage, inviting a prostitute friend (Shera Danese) over, and that’s not getting into the problems she brings because of her pimp Guido (Joe Pantoliano back when he still had hair). Joel’s friends seem to be hanging around more, but Joel runs into more problems involving his father’s prized Porsche and his interview with the Princeton recruiter (Richard Masur), and the only way to fix things, along with showing his actual business acumen, might be to team with Lana to make a lot of money with a lot of her friends having some, shall we say, interesting times with his friends.
This one was fun. Cruise’s Joel isn’t the most impressive of characters, but it isn’t too hard to see how he became as big as he is. Besides, this is a pretty stacked cast. Beyond the actors I have already mentioned, there’s also a young Bronson Pinchot as another of Joel’s friends, and the group of call girls includes future sitcom star Megan Mullally. And for all that I made the Hughes comparison, Hughes’s movies still have a somewhat family friendly vibe to them. This one? Not even close. Joel’s problems are not the sort of problems that most people experience. I mean, his biggest problem is getting back an expensive art curio back from a prostitute while working to get into an Ivy League school. Not exactly an issue for most people.
Still, it worked well. I wouldn’t say I liked Joel, but the script made his actions understandable, and it was rather clever. Every time things started to go his way, something else that made sense within the narrative would happen. Is it a comedy about the problems of a young member of the 1%? Sure, but it’s a fun comedy with some charming characters often played by familiar actors, and with a pretty darn good soundtrack. I mean, I generally liked it, and I actually don’t care so much for John Hughes’s high school comedies, so make of that what you will.
Grade: B+
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