Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1985 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.
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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 1985 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 1984 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 19, 1985, and we’re off to see The Coca-Cola Kid, The Legend of Billie Jean, The Man With One Red Shoe, and Wetherby.
The Coca-Cola Kid
You have to love a disclaimer at the opening of a movie saying that the name of the film has no association with the company it is named for.
Becker (Eric Roberts) is known as “The Coca-Cola Kid” for the wonders he works for the company when he goes into a sales area. Here, he arrives in Australia and discovers there is an area where absolutely no Coca-Cola is sold due to the monopoly of a local manufacturer. He’s bound-and-determined to make inroads there no matter what it takes.
This is such an odd little film. It’s a romantic comedy. It’s a commentary on corporate culture of the 1980s. And it just doesn’t seem to really know how to meld the two. The first half of the film was engaging, but the second half somehow feels like a completely different production.
I didn’t hate the movie, I was just very confused about what it was aiming to be because I’m not sure it knew what it wanted to be.
The Legend of Billie Jean
This movie so desperately wanted to be the voice of a generation.
Billie Jean Davy (Helen Slater) and her brother Binx (Christian Slater) live in Corpus Christie, Texas and dream of leaving some day. They run afoul of the local rich boy who wrecks their beloved scooter. When Billie Jean goes to get paid back for it, the bully’s father tries to sexually assault and that leads to the two going on the run with two of their friends. Along the way, Billie Jean becomes an unlikely folk hero to teens all across the country.
This film so clearly wanted to be a touchstone for the youth of the 80s, but it fails so much simply by knowing what it was trying to do. When you’re too aware of trying to look cool is usually when you fail the most.
The film isn’t bad, I didn’t hate it, it’s just an odd little production that was probably just too cool for school.
The Man With One Red Shoe
I can’t remember the last time a film bored me this much.
Richard Drew (Tom Hanks) unwittingly gets drawn into a fight between two factions of the CIA, and for three-quarters of the film has absolutely no idea what is going on around him. He is such the every man that he just can’t even pay attention to what is going on around him.
This film is so utterly boring that I barely made it through it. It was just unrelenting in what it thought it was funny, but it was such outdated comedy even in the 1980s, that it’s even worse in the 2020s.
An absolute snooze-fest that I will never think of again as soon as I type this last word.
… what movie was I talking about?
Wetherby
There are some times that even an amazing cast can leave you bewildered how a movie was made.
After a dinner party where Jean Travers (Vanessa Redgrave) is made uncomfortable by some old ghosts of her past, she next finds herself receiving a strange visitor the next morning whom commits suicide in her dining room. The film then follows the ramifications of the event as well as how the death touches the lives of so many.
Part murder mystery, part character study, Wetherby feels like a stage play that forgot it was being filmed. There are some very jarring transitions between different time periods that one imagines would be handled much better on stage by a competent lighting director than the way the film just has you then following that moment.
The film is fine, but very muddled at times.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on July 19, 2025, with The Black Cauldron, The Heavenly Kid, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation.
