It's back to the 80's again with Desperately Seeking Susan, a fun film fit for its time. The movie isn't perfect. In fact it breaks one of my Cardinal Sins of Film: Inserting parts for the sake of advancing the plot. In all thing's 80's, however, you have to remember the one rule of thumb: Fun is the word. It can be cheesy, it can be unbelievable, but the audience must have fun. It's hard to hate a film that makes fun its primary goal. Probably a good reason why the 80's and I have gotten along really well so far in my Movie-a-Day quest for 2018.
Roberta Glass (Rosanna Arquette), bored with her life, starts to get obsessive over the personal ads (remember those?) and begins to follow Susan (Madonna) around to live through her. After a bump on the head, Roberta thinks she is Susan and reinvigorates herself with a new life. Roberta is the source of a number of my favorite films throughout the film. She's trying to find her way without being too crazy in the process. One of my favorite scenes involves her hilarious magic act she gets throw into as a stand-in. This, for me, turned the tides from the film being "just ok" to "memorable 80's classic".
I say that because the film gets off to a very slow start. I spent the first fifteen minutes trying to understand what the connection was going to be between Roberta and Susan. I imagine a trailer would have told me everything I needed to know, but I'm judging the film purely off of what happened from start to finish.
Desperately Seeking Susan is a pretty fun comedy-mystery film despite there being a lack of real stakes. You never really worry about the characters' safety and that's fine. If you can give in to the ridiculousness of the movie as a whole, it's really quite fun. I'm giving it an 82.
No comments:
Post a Comment