On a personal level, it’s a relief to discover belatedly that I’m not alone in having “feelings” for the young Dan Aykroyd. Freeman’s examinations of sexism and racism within the film industry are riveting in particular, her essay on Eddie Murphy’s tortuous struggle to avoid being just “the black guy”, even when he was the biggest box-office draw in the world. Even more bafflingly, Rob Reiner’s 1984 comedic tour de force, This Is Spinal Tap, is completely ignored. Moreover, while Freeman apologises for omissions on the grounds that this is about films she likes, I feel that it was a mistake to disregard the entire, highly fertile 80s horror genre. There are times when Freeman appears to defend films that are quite rightly dismissed as junk ( Steel Magnolias? Yikes). I’m with Freeman – if you can’t adequately depict half the human race, then it may be time to rethink the day job. She’s also scathing about the self-serving codswallop you hear from predominantly male scriptwriters and film-makers about how “difficult” it is to create female characters. Freeman's examination of sexism and racism within the film industry are riveting Elsewhere, she’s critical of modern, “self-consciously dark” franchises such as The Hunger Games (which she likes) and Twilight, feeling that they reflect “a common belief among Hollywood film-makers that darkness equals depth and serves as a compensation for throwaway, forgettable scripts”. “Mind-numbing” blockbusters, once summer one-offs, are now ubiquitous because they perform best in huge, lucrative foreign markets.įreeman is not wholly partisan – she acknowledges 80s cinema’s faults, such as treating rape as a comedic plot device, homophobic slurs and overdone patriotism. Some of this makes for depressing reading – subtle, offbeat stories, still possible in an era such as the 80s, would be passed over these days, when even the likes of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas struggle to get their more esoteric projects green-lit. “Whereas once movie-making was the sole business of the studios,” she writes, “now it is a relatively tiny part of a big company.” She also ponders the new challenges to the film industry (internet, streaming, HBO) and the impact of film studios now being owned by international conglomerates. There are thought-provoking essays on wide-ranging subjects, such as the matter-of-fact treatment of abortion and female sexuality in Dirty Dancing, cited by Freeman as “one of the great feminist films of all time” (while I appreciate her argument, I still involuntarily twitch at a main female character called “Baby”) the way the late director John Hughes championed the unconventional “awkward” teenager the individualistic, even frumpy, female dressers of 80s movies compared with the buff made-over homogeny of today the theme of “kids fixing their parents” in Back to the Future the lack of transphobia in Tootsie (“Nothing dates a film quicker than bigotry”) how Ghostbusters was an homage to adult friendship and the bliss of watching a romcom such as When Harry Met Sally that doesn’t “make you feel like you’re having a lobotomy”.Īlong the way, Freeman interviews Hollywood players and explains her admiration for people as diverse as Tim Burton, Rick Moranis and the late Nora Ephron. They also taught me more about life than any library or teacher ever would.”įreeman brings in acknowledged classics ( Trading Places, The Breakfast Club, Ghostbusters), but is also unafraid to tackle the naffer end of the spectrum ( Top Gun, Die Hard, Romancing the Stone). Freeman argues that such films were “deeply formative”: “They provided the lifelong template for my perceptions of funniness (Eddie Murphy), coolness (Bill Murray) and sexiness (Kathleen Turner). The book’s title is a partial quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the cover art is of a video cassette evoking the video shop she was addicted to as a bookish New York child and her cover quote is: “I know people who have changed their entire lives because of a line of dialogue from When Harry Met Sally… and when I say ‘people’ I obviously mean ‘me’.”Īlthough Freeman acknowledges the potency of generational cultural nostalgia (in this case, for a generation that’s not technically her own), she not only likes “fun, mainstream” 80s films, she reveres them for being “sweetly specific in their references and completely universal in their humour and stories”. I n Life Moves Pretty Fast, Hadley Freeman sets her stall out early.
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