Wednesday 30 April 2014

"Can you fix it?" "Yeah, as soon as I learn how to walk on water, I'll get right on it, Dad."


(my goal is to finish this review before it's May)

Well I watched Pretty in Pink and I thought Tuff Turf would be something like that - a silly 80's high school movie. I was so wrong. A gang of youngsters is robbing an innocent bystander while an unknown biker attacks them. Next day at school the gang sees Morgan Hiller - a new student, and recognises him to be the biker. A not so subtle battle between the gang and Morgan starts, and gets even bigger when Morgan lays his eyes on the gang's leader girlfriend, Frankie.

Explaining the plot as shortly as possible is my least favourite part. I never make them sound as good as they really are.

But yeah, I didn't watch this movie hoping it would be something as silly as Pretty in Pink. That movie was so bad I didn't even do a review of it. No, I hoped that Tuff Turf would be more of my scene. And it definitely was. It is a high school movie alright, but not at all silly. I mean come on, in how many high school movies does somebody get brutally beaten up, find dead rats in their lockers or anyway have to fear for their life? Well, at least not in very many. But when we look at my movie taste, it's pretty obvious that 80's high school movies don't tickle my fancy until there's a lot of violence involved. *

One of my favourite things about Tuff Turf is the soundtrack. It's so marvellously... 80's. And it's mostly good songs. Jim Carroll performs three songs altogether. I really like 'Voices' and 'It's Too Late'. Both are really nice 80's punk, which is one of the best decades for punk, 70's being other good decade. The only song that seemed kind of weird was a version of "Twist and Shout". I love that song, but I don't know, I hadn't heard J.R. & The Z-man's version of that song before, and it just sounded... wrong. But my favourite song of the whole soundtrack is Love Hates, performed by Marianne Faithful. It's playing through most of the movie, and it has a really dark and almost desperate tone. It gave some thrill to the movie even though nothing was happening.

I'd really love to write as much as I wanted, but that would be mostly admiring small little wonders of this movie. To be honest, I tried to search this movie in Manchester, but the staff in the store hadn't even heard of Tuff Turf, and I had to spell the name out for them. But yeah, they didn't have it, so I had to use different sources to see it. But if I see it somewhere, I'm so going to buy it.

I don't know if the acting is so good in this movie. I mean it's 80's acting. I don't think 80's movies are very known for their good acting. But I think at least James Spader did a very good job. And also a certain "Robert Downey". Jesus, it felt weird not seeing "Jr." added to his name in the credits. But Robert Downey Jr. was somehow very sweet in this movie. And it's weird - he looks different but his voice is the same. James Spader also sounds the same, but he also looks the same, so I don't know. But there's a different between these too actors: Downey Jr. looks so much better now, he looked too much like some kind of... I don't know if there's a word for it in English, but in Finnish we use the word "kiiltokuvapoika", and that's exactly what RDJ looked like when he was younger. However, James Spader was very pretty when younger. I don't know when he transformed from pretty to handsome. 

Anyway I have 6 minutes before it's May and I'm pretty sure that now my review is done. 

☆☆☆☆☆
5 / 10

(Note: The rating of the movie was edited on 21st of Febuary 2015 due to thinking more about the movie)

* (Though I'm being quite hopeful with a third 80's movie about teenagers, The New Kids. Though that has more interesting looking genres ((Drama, horror, thriller)). This sounds like my scene. We'll see tomorrow.)

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