Can't Buy Me Love (1987)

Genre: Comedy

Directed by: Steve Rash

Cast: Patrick Dempsey, Amanda Peterson, Seth Green

Running time: 94 minutes

Ronald Miller is a high school nerd who pays off the most popular girl in school, head cheerleader Cynthia Mancini, to pretend to date him for a month, so that he will be seen as a cool kid by the others. The plan works like a charm, but Ronald’s newfound popularity in school goes to his head, and, like it usually does in these cases, the scheme backfires.

Since we are talking about a teen comedy from the 80’s, cheesiness is to be expected. For the most part, this is a cute film. The acting is decent and the storyline is compelling enough. As we have seen through the years, teenagers are easy to influence. Once they think you are cool, you can get almost anything over, even a weird dance.

Unfortunately, my appreciation for this movie crumbled towards the end. I was willing to give it a lot of leeway, as a product of its time and genre, but that speech in the cafeteria by Ronald close to the end of the film totally ruined it for me. It came off so cheesy, preachy and lame that it was laughable. Disappointing.

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