Comment by Magic Marmalade:
What a weird movie.
It seems to be, on the face of it, chumming along with the kind of Breakfast Club / John Hughes, 80s teen angst / melodrama kind of audience, and yet has a more substantial, and even darker heart in the story, aimed at a more adult audience.
In fact the whole teen romance bit between Cusack and Skye seems to fall by the wayside toward the end, focusing more on the relationship between her and her father's "tax troubles", with Cusack eventually receding into the background altogether.
Heavy subject matter for the audience you'd expect this to be aimed at. and the kind of movie who's clothes this superficially appears to wear...
...And other than the general look of the film, the two leads and one
highly oversold moment (The boombox moment), which lasts possibly less than ten seconds and has precisely zero impact on story or anything, yet has become a cultural touchstone, not least through the likes of Deadpool and Family Guy etc. referencing it, this lacks all the kind of feel of those other movies, the zing, and the dynamic eighties style editing, and so forth...indeed, I'd go as far as to call it quite...
flat, by comparison.
It almost feels, like this was a more seriously intentioned movie with some great, strong dramatic ideas of it's own, that was either co-opted, or re-purposed to try and shoe-horn it into a John Hughes category of movie, and for that audience.
If it had gone either way more completely, it might have been a great movie on it's own: Heavily toward the Dramatic, adult aspects, and it might have been an Oscar worthy movie... treated more lightly, and it it would have been sitting alongside Ferris Bueller in the collective affections, but ends up just befuddling, and underwhelming.
One moment, does not a movie make.
Meh.