Review: Mischief

Set in the American Midwest in the 1950s, Doug McKeon plays a virginal dork with a crush on local hottie Marilyn (Kelly Preston, whose entrance indeed evokes another Marilyn of the 1950s). McKean strikes up a friendship with newly arrived young hood Chris Nash, who got expelled from his last school. Nash is everything McKeon isn’t, and the latter kinda idolises the former. Nash decides to get McKeon laid, and given his girl of choice is the unattainable Marilyn, it’s probably no easy task. Meanwhile, Nash finds himself interested in a girl named Bunny (Catherine Mary Stewart), currently dating a preppy dick bully (D.W. Brown). Throw in a geeky girl (Jami Gertz), Marilyn’s dorky dad (Graham Jarvis), and Nash’s abusive father (a pre-“The Stepfather” Terry O’Quinn, thoroughly wasted), and you’ve got yourself a movie.

 

Meandering, unfunny, and mostly poorly cast 1985 comedy from director Mel Damski (“Yellowbeard”, “Legendary”) probably wanted to be somewhere in between “Losin’ It” and TV’s “Happy Days”. Scripted by Noel Black (director-producer of the 1968 cult flick “Pretty Poison”), the basic premise is actually a lot of fun in theory. The execution, however is completely botched. The dream girl played by Kelly Preston is too stuck-up, and the characters played by Catherine Mary Stewart and Jami Gertz just seem to clutter things up too much. Meanwhile, Chris Nash and a miscast Doug McKeon seem to have better chemistry with each other than with anyone else. I guess to an extent they’re trying to emulate the James Dean/Sal Mineo relationship in “Rebel Without a Cause”, a film that gets referenced in the plot and even emulated at times. That’s fine, but given the rather distractingly effeminate performance by McKeon (who has zero charisma or screen presence) and the amount of time he seems to spend hanging around brooding James Dean wannabe Nash (who comes across more like a preppy quarterback-type than a brooding tough biker guy), it all plays out a bit confusingly. There’s a lot of dialogue between McKeon and Nash that also seems to play up a homosexual subtext too, and yet I’m pretty sure it’s not meant to. They wear matching plaid shirts a couple of times, and at one point McKeon joins Nash for a ride on his bike, with his arms around him. In a film where the main plot is supposed to be McKeon getting into Kelly Preston’s panties while Nash tries to get into Catherine Mary Stewart’s. Add nerdy Jami Gertz, and Preston’s jerk ex-boyfriend played by D.W. Brown, and the film has too many characters to deal with, and it all just lacks focus to the point where eventually it has to rush whilst forgetting about poor Jami Gertz completely. That must’ve been a helluva messy cutting room floor full of Gertz, whose Laney Boggs-ish character is never fully integrated into the film. More damagingly, McKeon starts dating Preston out of the blue, almost and a guy as dorky as him dating a girl as hot as her so quickly isn’t convincing here.

 

As I said earlier, Preston isn’t very likeable here. Yes, it’s partly intentional but it doesn’t lead to a very satisfying ending (Now if Gertz’s character were more fully integrated into the story, we would have much less of an issue there…) Also, she plays the biggest prick tease in the history of prick teases, she’s aggravating. That said, if you’ve ever wanted to see Kelly Preston fully naked, this is your movie. Or better yet, go online, it’s quicker than having to suffer through this. She looks absolutely amazing, by the way. For me though, the only worthwhile thing here is the soundtrack full of familiar 50s classics (‘Peggy Sue’, ‘School Daze’, ‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘Since I Don’t Have You’, etc.) That keeps you awake, but doesn’t come close to saving the film. Take out some of the McKeon-Nash scenes, eliminate Jami Gertz’s part altogether (she’s barely used in it anyway), and replace Kelly Preston’s stuck-up character with Catherine Mary Stewart’s much nicer character, and you’d have, if not a funnier film certainly a much better one. You could have it so that Nash’s character doesn’t even have a love interest, and his only function is to help McKeon fend off Stewart’s jerky ex. As is, it’s just got too much going on.

 

Meandering, unfocussed film has too many relationships it wants to deal with in one 90 minute film. An unpersuasive performance by Doug McKeon and a thoroughly unlikeable leading lady don’t help, though its depiction of 1950s America is at least slightly more convincing than “Porky’s”. Also, the generic title flat-out sucks, especially when previous contenders “Getting Lucky” and “Heart and Soul” would’ve made much more sense.

 

Rating: C-