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Showing posts from November, 2018

Valley Girl (1983)

I’ve been meaning to write a review about Valley Girl for sometime now, but it’s always eluded me as to how to approach this movie.   On the surface it is a silly teen comedy, but there are a lot of interesting things going on.   It’s a movie that is not only about cultural differences but generational ones as well.   Valley Girl was originally conceived as being a cheap exploitation movie designed to make quick buck at the box office; the fact that it turned out to be a genuinely good movie was just icing on the cake.   In many ways, Valley Girl is a pre-cursor to the John Hughes comedies of the 80s; the romance between the two leads (Julie and Randy) is threatened by Julie’s social status – her best friends don’t approve of Randy and want her to get back together with Tommy, the high school hunk.   Julie is from the Valley (the suburbs), Randy is from the city (Hollywood) and her friends view him as a threat; he is a total outsider and doesn’t belong in their clique. (At my hig