Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned from Eighties Movies (and Why We Don't Learn Them from Movies Anymore) by Hadley Freeman

Life Moves Pretty Fast: The Lessons We Learned from Eighties Movies (and Why We Don't Learn Them from Movies Anymore)
by Hadley Freeman
Pages: 352
Date: June 14 2016
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Series: None

Review
Rating: 3.5 out of 5.0
Read: March 11 to 21 2016
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first book that I’ve read by this author. This is a non-fiction book about movies in the 1980s. To a large extent, more than I expected, these films are seen through a certain level of reactions to those films compared with what is seen today on screens.

Hmms. The last time I looked at the book page I thought I’d seen 100s of reviews, but I only see 54 at the moment. I was going to make some comment about how many reviews there already were, and how mine wasn’t really needed but . . I see I was wrong, sadly.

Okay, let’s see what I can do:

1) Dirty Dancing: Abortions Happen and That’s Just Fine
This is one of the better chapters in the book. I had entered the book figuring I’d get some nice little insights into both films that I enjoyed in the 1980s, and films that I hadn’t seen. Possibly a third category of films I didn’t particularly like, but was willing to learn more about. Instead I got whacked upside the head with social commentary, obsessions about how much better films were then compared with today, and how so many of the films made ‘then’ (1980s) couldn’t even be made today (or, I mean, have a studio allow the film to be made through them).

Well, this specific chapter was about both the film Dirty Dancing, and social/cultural/political aspects of abortion. This is a film made in the conservative 1980s. It showed, as an important plot point, a horribly botched illegal abortion. This is just one of those things that occurred – the people of the time (especially the studio), and the author, just kind of pushed past that as just something that occurred – today a film like this would either not include that plot point or drastically change the outcome. One note before I go on – I specifically recall that abortion angle from the film, from watching it when I was a kid – I didn’t push past it, it’s one of the reasons I’ve only seen this film once or twice. A horribly botched abortion and an asshole boyfriend, yeah, I didn’t particularly like that.

The compare and contrast? Mentions how today things had oddly changed. Abortion is either not even thought of ('Knocked Up')/mentioned/dealt with, or things go a somewhat anti-abortion direction. Like in Juno when the kid decides to keep the baby directly caused by her going to an abortion clinic and getting stopped by an abortion protester.

2) The Princess Bride: True Love Isn’t Just about the kissing parts
This is both a good chapter in the book, and one of my favorite films of all time. There’s interesting tidbits about the filming of the film, personal interactions the author had with the film, etc. I can’t really add anything else.

3) Pretty in Pink: Awkward Girls Should Never have Makeovers
Is it this one or the Harry met Sally one that goes on and on about Romcoms then and now? Well, this specific chapter digs deep into Molly Ringwald, John Hughes, and the man-boy that was Hughes.

Ah, I see the subtitle to the next chapter. Yeah, Pretty in Pink was more about how the female stars in the 1980s were able to be themselves, to dress the way they want to dress, to chose or not chose the boy they want, etc. And look ‘normal’. While the female stars of today all, every single one of them (apparently, I’ve not personally spent much time watching teen films of today) fit size zero.

Teen women in the 1980s were allowed to be independent and their own people. The teen women of today, in films, are appendages of men – and they show how they’ve grown through those cliché makeover scenes that turn ugly ducklings into swans.

4) When Harry Met Sally: Romcoms Don’t Have to Make You Feel Like You’re Having a Lobotomy
There was a time when all women were not shown to be insane, and all men weren’t shown as gross douchbags. That time was the 1980s. But that’s how they are shown today.
Romantic comedy films of today are ‘misogynistic bullshit’. They were not always that way.

5) Ghostbusters: (with a Segue into Top Gun: How to be a Man
I should have paid more attention to the subtitle before going into this one. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been as confused as to why I entered a chapter about a film I enjoyed, Ghostbusters, and mostly read about how ‘Top Gun’ was actually gay porn (or however the author worded that). Something along the lines of – Iceman was obviously Maverick’s boyfriend, reinforced by a) end of film when Iceman smiles and says ‘you can ride my tail anytime’; b) the woman only got to sleep with Maverick, who kept ducking actually having sex, by dressing as a man.

The chapter is also about how, when films in the 1980s were not teen films, when they had actual adult men - they actually acted like adult men - like, say, in Ghostbusters. As opposed to today in which men, at least in films act like boys who do not wish to grow up. While in the 1980s many a man wanted to race, as quickly as possible, to adulthood. Now men just want to be boys forever and ever.

6) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: The Impact of Social Class
The ‘men are boys’ talk in the last chapter kind of threw me. The part wherein Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a social commentary on life and on how the rich are either assholes or have asshole parents . . . kind of lost me. Apparently John Hughes was from the lower class. This film here is his fantasy of what it might have been like if he had money. Apparently a lot of Hughes films were overt or covert commentary on the class struggle inherent in American life.

Figures. I just thought Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was a good film. Not everything needs to lead to decades long discussions on the social economic status of the world and everything. Sometimes they can just be good films. That’s me talking here in this paragraph, not the book.

7) Steel Magnolias: Women are Interesting
Oh see, I got all annoyed and stopped wanting to read after chapters 5 & 6, then turn to yet another ‘commentary on then and now’ chapter, using Steel Magnolias as something of an example, along with other films like Beaches, and I actually liked the chapter. Who knew?

Okay then – once upon the time there used to be this type of film that gets called various things, though mostly ‘women’s films’. The films involve more than one woman, likely many more than 2, the women actually like each other, and the main goal of the film/characters is not, horrors, to land a man. Now-a-days these types of films find it very difficult to be made. Various reasons. Changing nature of the film industry (the movie houses are all corporate owned now; international proceeds are very important; both men and women will watch ‘men’s films’, but only women will watch women’s films (apparently); etc. etc.).

So, today, most of what you can find slips through by likely independent means, or with an edge of grossness (ala Bridesmaids). Mostly, though, films involving women today either have the women be nothing more than someone’s girlfriend without much of her own personality, and/or there to bitch at other women. Unlike the old days, as in 1980s, when women could actually be fully developed people, and not erupt into bitchiness every two seconds.

8) Baby Boom: Successful Women are Sexy as Hell
It’s odd, in its way, but women used to be able to be shown to have careers back in the 1980s. As in high powered ones. Back then a woman could have a more successful, or at least as successful job as the men in the film; and while having it all was a struggle at the time, it was handled ‘better’ then than now (as in, then women were allowed to have careers – heck men even enjoyed that the woman had a career; now men get pissed if the woman puts her career first and have to be taught a lesson – several films now-a-days have the man change not an iota, while the woman would have to do things like quit her job to appease the man). An example of 'now' is 'Love Actually', wherein all the women, except for, I think, two, had much less important/powerful careers than the men they were with - and of the two with high paying jobs - one worked in porn, and the other 'didn't get to have a man'.

9) Back to the Future: Parents are Important
This film is much more about the parents than about Marty McFly. In the ‘40s parents were seen as the wise guiding hand to their kids in teen orientated films; in the ‘50s & ‘60s they were seen as something to rebel against; in the ‘70s parents were either bland or as depressing as the kids; in the ‘80s ‘parents really came into their own’. In the ‘80s kids tried to help better their parents. Like in Dirty Dancing wherein Baby tried to teach her father some moral lessons. And in Back to the Future the kid tried to get his parents to take charge of their lives. Though it also included scenes of a mother lusting after her, unknown to her, son.

10) Batman: Superheroes Don’t’ have to be Such a Drag
This chapter is about both the Batman franchise and Tim Burton. Burton being someone the author fondly loved. Or something like that.

Let’s see – Burton’s Batman was the best of them all. Especially because the Joker died. And Keaton had crazy eyes.

Nolan’s Batman films are strangely pro-Bush; pro-breaking the law to get the bad guys; ultra-surveillance, etc.

The non-Burton Batman films in the 1990s were horrid garbage.

11) Eddie Murphy’s Eighties Movies: Race Can be Transcended
This chapter focuses on Murphy’s career. From attempting to join SNL, and being told that the black spot had been filled and him having to be a player instead of a signed cast member, to his bitter old man guise of today.

Of all the comedic actors of the 1980s, the only one who made it to today with a respectable career is Bill Murray. Not the person who had the biggest success in the 1980s, that being Murphy. Murray, unlike a lot of the comedians of the age, was able to transition. Murphy, and the others, largely flopped – Murphy flopping with highly successfully billions in profit family films. Murray succeeding by making films with Wes Anderson.

Right, so – this chapter, as noted, follows Murphy’s career. It’s a quite interesting chapter. Murphy’s first film role, in 48 Hours, literally had the lead character shouting racist words at him. And yet Murphy still pulled off the role and made it his own. Several of his later parts had actually originally been written for white people, like Beverly Hills Cop (Sylvester Stallone had the part at one point) and Golden Child – and he was able to transcend race. Other than a few jokes that included his race, and the part where he had to be basically asexual, the fact that he was black in the part was largely of little importance.

And that’s all folks. That’s the book.

Overall: I expected to dive in and wiggle around in glowing remembrances of films I’d seen and loved from yesteryear. And, to a certain extent, that’s included in this book. There was a lot more, though, on feminism, social injustice and other social issues, than I expected to find. Some were quite interesting. Some flew over my head. Some were just confusing (re: Bueller as social commentary; Top Gun is a gay film).

Despite some of the things I noted above, I would still recommend the book to any and all. Though it probably helps, somewhat, if you’ve already seen every movie mentioned by in chapter titles, and inside the chapters. With exceptions, the author had a tendency to dwell a lot more on ‘other’ films inside each chapter, instead of just on whatever film is listed in the chapter title.

March 21 2016