Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1984 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. Imagine a world where This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man hit theaters on the same day. That is the world of 1984.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1984 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 40th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory.
This time around, it’s Dec. 21, 1984, and we’re off to see Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo, The Flamingo Kid, Johnny Dangerously, Micki & Maude, and Protocol.
Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo
No, you aren’t imagining things, this movie came out the same year as the first one. Breakin’ came out in May, and seven months later, we’re back with the second film.
Kelly “Special K” Bennett (Lucinda Dickey) has been getting professional work since the first film, but not anything that is exciting her. She moves back home when a chorus line job comes to an end and then heads back to the streets to meet up with Ozone (Adolfo “Shabba Doo” Quiñones) and Turbo (Michael “Boogaloo Shrimp” Chambers), and just in time: A developer is trying to steal the community center!
This movie has been endlessly mocked for decades due to its title, and I was expecting it to be worse than it was. Don’t get me wrong, it is a bad movie (I’m looking at you, hospital dance scene), but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever watched. It feels more like a Disney Channel movie where everyone has to get together to save this thing or that thing in their community, and it’s almost always a clubhouse.
But imagine your legacy being that your film title has become a punchline for decades to come.
The Flamingo Kid
The love affair with the 1950s and 1960s seemed to be at their height in the 1980s, and The Flamingo Kid is another entry that revels in this nostalgia for a ‘simpler time.’
Jeffrey Willis (Matt Dillion) is a teenager looking for a direction in his life. His father (Héctor Elizondo), wants him to be an engineer, but Jeffrey wants to find his own way in the world. He takes a job at the El Flamingo club for the summer and ends up being taken under the wing of Phil Brody (Richard Crenna), who fills his head with all sorts of ideas about the future. As the summer comes to a close, Jeffrey learns a valuable lesson about who you put your faith into, and just what your family means to you.
The film is fine, if a little slow at times. The story does seem more enamored with the trappings of the setting than the story itself. It’s not terribly original, and feels like so many other films that look back with nostalgia glasses as the filmmaker’s younger years.
There is nothing wrong with the film, it’s just fairly unremarkable.
Johnny Dangerously
When I saw that Johnny Dangerously was on the 1984 list I realized that I had no idea when I last thought of this movie. I remembered Joe Pesci making jokes about people doing things to him “once… once.” and that’s about it. And then I remembered it getting horrible reviews.
Never one to shy away, I decided to jump in and check it out all these years later.
I’ll say this for Johnny Dangerously: It starts strong and then just fizzles about halfway in. It desperately wants to do for gangster movies what Airplane! did for disaster movies, but just never quite makes it. The opening 20 to 30 minutes of the movie garner multiple laughs, and then… you just don’t care.
It makes no sense why it goes so wildly off the rails compared to the opening, and you keep rooting for it to find that voice again.
Part of me feels like you should check it out just to see a young Michael Keaton who shines in every moment he’s in, but just be prepared to suddenly lose interest.
Micki & Maude
Another Dudley Moore film where he plays someone who gets caught up in cheating despite really loving his wife.
Rob Salinger (Moore) is a TV reporter who is dealing with his wife Micki (Ann Reinking) enjoying reat success due to her involvement with the newly elected governor. All Rob wants is a child, but Micki is too busy at the moment and keeps putting it off. As Micki stays busy, Rob meets Maude (Amy Irving), and sleeps with her. He quickly finds out she is pregnant, and low-and-behold so is Micki. Now he has two women to deal with and fakes a marriage to Maude to keep her happy as well. He loves them both and can’t decide between the two of them.
Why Moore couldn’t seem to break out of this mold is beyond me. For such a talented man, it would have been nice to see him play someone you could actually root for every so often. This is the third movie just this year – Unfaithfully Yours and Best Defense – where it’s difficult to root for him. He only has one movie a year from here on out, and I can’t say I’m sad to take a bit of a break from him. A very talented man that just couldn’t break his way out of mediocre plots.
Protocol
I come away from saying how Dudley Moore should have broken out of the confines of playing unlikeable characters to Goldie Hawn who played the same character many times but the difference here is her characters were likable.
Sunny Ann Davis (Hawn) is a waitress in a safari-themed cocktail bar in Washington D.C. One night, she finds herself in a crowd and saves a Middle Eastern leader from an assassination attempt that results in her getting shot and becoming a national hero. She gets pulled into government work because the leader takes a liking to her and the U.S. wants a military base in his country. Sunny learns more about her country than she has ever known nd finds herself falling in love with in ways she had never known before.
The film itself is fairly pedestrian and not that much of a story. But what keeps the movie moving is Hawn’s endless charm. You immediately fall for Sunny as a person and just want to keep watching her. Hawn had played similar characters before, most notably in Private Benjamin, but there are enough differences here that you don’t feel like you’re watching a retread.
It is a light comedy that will keep you amused and entertained throughout.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on Dec. 28 with Mrs. Soffel!
