I watched Say Anything last night for the first time in many years, and I was so so impressed with it. I’ve always loved that movie, but I thought maybe it might not have aged well. It came out in 1989, and 80s movies have a tendency toward cheese.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that it still kicks all sorts of rom-com ass.
I feel like this was largely due to Cameron Crowe doing an amazing job at portraying a far more realistic teenage experience than most rom-coms do. And of course the cast was phenomenal.
His protagonist, Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) isn’t a handsome jock, nor is he a nerd. But he is into sports (kickboxing! The sport of the future!). He’s also into music, and has an awesome mix of not having any real dating game, but being the sort of likable guy everyone knows, and has an awkward sort of charm.
He lives with his sister (Joan Cusack, his actual sister), and her small son, and they have a very realistic relationship. Part genuinely fond, partly extremely irritated with each other.
His best friends are all girls, and unlike in films like My Best Friend’s Wedding, or Some Kind of Wonderful, they don’t actually fall in love with him or step into the role of love interest. They’re just his buds. And they have relatively well fleshed out characters. Especially Lily Taylor who does a fantastic job as that one friend who’s obsessed with the guy who’s no good for her.
Diane Court (Ione Skye), the actual love interest is very academic, but also just stunningly pretty. She’s not your typical, vapid cool girl that Lloyd has to try and impress by being some sort of “bad ass”. She’s relatively introverted and focused on her studies, but she’s also gorgeous, so there’s none of that “smart girls have to wear glasses and have bad hair” trope, which, while it’s fun, could honestly use a break. Smart girls look like all kinds of people. And speaking of smart girls, she’s far more intelligent book-wise than Lloyd, and instead of resenting this, or being overly intimidated, he is unstoppably impressed and proud and supportive of her smarts.
Diane’s relationship with her father (John Mahoney) who raised her, is complex and has a lot of emotional depth. Rather than just going for the “mom died of cancer/in a car accident etc.” trope, they simply had her choose in court to live with her father. “It just felt safer,” her character says. This is pretty rare in cinema. The acknowledgment that sometimes, when a couple separates, it’s the dad who’s the best suited as a full time caregiver, and that impressed me.
Diane’s relationship with her father takes an almost equal center stage spot next to her relationship with Lloyd, and the titular line is spoken not to Lloyd, as one would expect, but to her dad. “You can say anything to me!” she exclaims to him during a tense moment. They clearly share a deep bond, and it takes some heart-wrenching twists as the movie progresses and we learn that her father has been involved in some shady financial dealings.
Diane herself, while stunningly beautiful, sweet and kind to boot, has her own issues and her own complex characterization. She’s torn between her conflicting duties to her father, her boyfriend and her advancing academic career and she struggles convincingly with all three as the movie progresses.
I even hesitate to call this film a rom-com. Maybe because where there some genuine laughs, there’s also a lot of drama and deep emotion portrayed, and not just for the usual reasons. There’s themes about family, duty and obligation, the fear of life after high school, and dating pressures that are just so poignantly rendered as the main characters fumble their way through the plot.
I just adored it and would recommend it to any newcomer, or people too young to have been introduced to it by friends or older siblings. It’s more than just a Peter Gabriel song and a boy, dramatically holding a boom box over his head to serenade a girl. It’s really so much more than that.
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