Johnny Be Good

A couple days ago, I decided to sit down and watch a movie within the comfort of my own home. The beauty of Comcast's "On Demand" feature is that you can scroll through around a hundred different movies and the majority of them won't cost you a thing. I guess it's kind of like paying for an all-inclusive resort and realizing that you don't have to pay for snorkeling or parasailing... you are already paying for Comcast service, and there are some nice extras included.

Anyway, so I am looking through the list of movies and I come across "Johnny Be Good". I'd never heard of it, but after reading the nugget of info they give you about the movie, I learned that it was a sports movie about a high school quarterback who is highly recruited and ends up getting bogged down by all of the perks and benefits of being a star in the college ranks. Sounds pretty sweet, right?

Then I realized that the star of the movie is Anthony Michael Hall! Anyone who really loves 80s movies as much as I do will recognize this guy as the nerd from 16 Candles, Weird Science, and The Breakfast club (and the nerd from several other movies that weren't quite as popular). However, in this movie we are supposed to buy that he is a powerful high school jock who the women love? Sorry, I just can't get on board with that. A.M. Hall will always be a dork in my mind, and that's the way I like it.

Secondly, Robert Downey Jr. plays Hall's uncoordinated, tag-along best friend. Now look, I am comfortable enough in my manhood to admit this; Downey is at least 10x hotter than Hall and has absolutely no business in that role. Whoever was in charge of casting that movie must've been fired shortly thereafter. I could only watch about 15 minutes of this movie before I had to turn it off... it's easily one of the most wonderfully conceived but poorly interpreted movies in the history of the silver screen. The plot of the movie writes itself, particularly because a movie like this really hadn't been successfully attempted yet, but what was crapped out onto the screen was this boring, Anthony-Michael-Hall-worshipping fiasco that was so disappointing that I decided not to watch any other movies after I had stopped vomiting.

I will say that the best part of the movie for me was when all of these college recruiters were over at Hall's house doing anything possible to get him to come to their university. In particular, the Alabama rep and the Penn State rep were going at it and giving each other noogies and stuff, and I couldn't help but think about my friend Lee who is going to leave Alabama's Political Science PhD program because he was wooed away by Penn State, and I was imagining the deans of each school giving each other noogies and fighting over having Lee research and teach at their institution. Another reason why movies are just like real life.

Oh, did I mention that the main character's name was "Johnny Walker"? That's right, just like the whiskey. Blah. Do they make mouthwash for your eyes?