Little Darlings

Little Darlings
March 21, 1980
Paramount
Comedy, Drama
VHS
B-

Yes, I'm back.  I moved and didn't have Internet at home for three weeks.  I'd planned to take a little break after the '70s ended, but nothing like this.

So, yeah, welcome to the '80s.  I've already watched most of my movies for 1980 and I'll try to blog at least one a day, and then it'll be a movie every two or three days, since I have a full-time job now.  This is in some ways an odd movie to start with, but there's something odd/off about all of my movies from that year.  I don't think it's just that I turned 12 that year, went from grade school to junior high.  When some decades start (1960 and '70 are other good examples) there's this feeling that people don't know where things are going to land.  In the case of 1980, the deeper I go into the year the more I feel like not only was there a taking stock of the '70s but also a retaking stock of the '60s.  This plays out in different ways in different movies of course.

In this case, what we've got here is what would be a popular teen-movie plot not only throughout the '80s but into the American Pie era: a contest to lose virginity first.  What's different here of course is that, in a script co-written by two women, the contestants are 15-year-old girls.  And even nearly 35 years later, there's a lot of discomfort and hypocrisy surrounding female and/or teen sexuality.  So we've got an R-rated movie in which there's no onscreen sex, or anything shown beyond kissing.  (Even the male nudity is at a distance, through binoculars.)

The two contestants are 16-year-old Tatum O'Neal as Ferris and 17-year-old Kristy McNichol as Angel.  "Don't let the name fool you," she advises also ironically named Randy (Matt Dillon in a very early role), and the tagline for the movie was "Don't let the title fool you."  I was aware of the movie and its tagline but I was too young to be part of the original audience.  (As for what movies I saw that year, we'll get to that.)  I think it would've been an uncomfortable movie for me at 12 (out to myself for years already as bisexual), especially with its dyke-baiting lines.  And I can remember that "virgin" was indeed an insult then, yes, even for younger adolescents.  Not that you were supposed to be having sex of course!  (It was the same sort of logic that got 10-year-old boys called "fags" if they had female friends.)

Even now, in middle age, it's a disquietening movie to watch.  On the one hand, it wants to be a zany summer-camp movie, like Meatballs, with racy moments like the condom-machine theft.  But on the other, it's also this cuts-to-the-bone drama with a very good performance by McNichol as the tough but sensitive Angel.  She not only plays the dramatic scenes well, but she has an absolutely infectious smile, as if she's indulgently amused at the world.  (Oscar-winner O'Neal is relatively forgettable in her more shallow role of the rich girl.)  McNichol's performance, combined with a instant-nostalgia soundtrack, almost raised this to a B, but the movie is too conflicted, and some of the characters barely rise to the level of cartoon.  (Two girls are named Carrots and Chubby, and other than one being red-haired and the other plump, I couldn't tell you anything else about them.)  I recommend the movie, especially if you're old enough to remember the early '80s (or are curious about them), but don't expect a great film.

Marianne Gordon, who plays Mrs. Whitney (showing up in a flashback that looks and sounds like a feminine hygiene commercial of the era), was Chickie in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini.  Laura Whyte, who plays Dana's mother, would be Laura's mother in High Fidelity.  And Cynthia Nixon would go from hippie girl Sunshine to cynical Miranda on Sex in the City.