Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1982 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1982 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1982 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around it’s July 16, 1982, and we’re off to see Six Pack and Young Doctors in Love.
Quick side note: Since we launched this series this year, we’ve discovered that Vintage Video Podcast is doing the exact same project with two differences: First, it’s audio (naturally), and second, they are doing every major film. We’ve listened to numerous episodes and it’s fun checking off their thoughts against my own. Check them out over at Vintage Video Podcast.
Six Pack
Two notable things happen in Six Pack: Kenny Rogers’s hit “Love Will Turn You Around” was written for this movie and it’s a very early performance from Diane Lane.
Otherwise, Six Pack is a wholly unremarkable road movie injected with a man-finds-a-heart-of-gold for orphans story. And, just as luck would have it, Brewster (Rogers) hooks up with these kids because they try to steal car parts from him and he just happens to be in need of a mechanic for his race card. Thank goodness for that luck!
There is an incredibly uncomfortable scene of Breezy (Lane) seducing another race driver so her brothers can steal parts for him. It reminds you just how not comfortable a lot of movies from the 1980s were. From her age to the entire scenario, it’s just a super uncomfortable scene.
Six Pack is a completely forgettable movie that barely stays in your brain for 10 seconds longer than its run time.
Young Doctors in Love
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It’s difficult to say what type of comedy Young Doctors in Love was trying to be. At times it felt like your standard “kooky staff in a very serious job” style, and at other moments it was as if it was going for a full-on Airplane! parody.
The story follows medical interns at a hospital with all of your typical workplace hijinks, meanwhile there is an incredibly drawn-out side story about a hit man trying to kill a mafia don that’s a patient there. Add in that the only way his son, Angelo (Hector Elizondo) can see his father is by cross-dressing, and he has a member of hospital staff fall in love with him thinking he’s a woman… the movie is a mess.
There were a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments, but this movie tried so hard to throw every idea at the wall. You never knew what type of comedy you were going to get next. The weakest plot by far was the attempted murder plot which really came down to just watching Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame getting injured every single time in increasingly bizarre ways.
It’s a fine movie, albeit very confused about its own identity at times.
1982 Movie Reviews will return on July 23 with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The World According to Garp, and Zapped!!
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