Racing with the Moon

It's 1942. Henry 'Hopper' Nash (Sean Penn) and Nicky (Nicolas Cage) are small town best friends drafted into the Marines. With deployment weeks away, they work at the local bowling alley setting pins and chase girls. Hopper is infatuated with rich newcomer Caddie Winger (Elizabeth McGovern) but she's secretly the maid's daughter. Nicky gets Sally Kaiser pregnant and needs $150 for the abortion. Hopper and Nicky get beaten by Navy sailors after trying to hustle them playing pool. Hopper asks Caddie for the money.

The first half is a slow coming-of-age romance. The second half takes some more intense turns. The problem is that Sally don't have much screen time before then. The movie doesn't invest that much in her plight. This is about Hopper and Caddie. Ultimately, it's a device to get at their own story. It's nice to see these great actors in their youth and there is a bitter sweet romance here.

I've always viewed Richard Benjamin as a sensitive, honest filmmaker. Sure, he's made some less-than-great films, but his directorial debut, `My Favorite Year' may be about the funniest film ever made.

Racing with the Moon--the boy, his friend, and the girl--a small town in the Midwest in 1942 and a few weeks before the young men are to be inducted in the service. Their lives will be changed unequivocally, and they will no longer be boys. This is all the time they have left to enjoy the freedom, the carefree wonderment that is youth.

Stevn Kloves first produced script (later The Fabulous Baker Boys) is right on target with smart roles for three young stars. Sean Penn had Taps, and Fast Times behind him, and was his career was flourishing, Nick Cage had done Valley Girl, and Birdy, but would languish for ten more years, before achieving stardom, and Elizabeth McGovern, who's wonderful as Caddie Winger, is still waiting her just recognition.

Benjamin was born and raised in New York City, but his age is appropriate to our main characters. I'm sure he smiled, over and over as he recalled his own youth. His heart is in Racing with the Moon, and its worth your time, to go back for a moment, and enjoy those times.

If you like the romance movies this one is the one. It is smart in a nice way and its dramatic. It takes place in 1940s. Elizabeth McGovern is great, Nicolas Cage, And Sean Penn. :):):):):):) I dont know why they call it racing with the moon. watch it!!!!

Unlike most Hollywood movies that must be pigeonholed into categories--comedy, drama, romance--this movie dared to be all of these. And it dared to be low-key, without large, manufactured tragedies or plot hooks. Rather, it had the elegiac mood and idiosyncratic details of a fine short story, with its characters neither good nor bad but human, their lives honestly and touchingly observed by a sensitive screenwriter and director.

Saw it in 85 on video with my then girlfriend and another couple, we 18 yr old guys were like chick flick? Great. And as it turned out it was great, the Characters were all flawed and a bit overacted but that was ok, it was believable and a window into another time, that maybe we didn't understand or agree with it being the party 80s and all. But it was still clean fun and nostalgic in a way to young people who were basically watching their grandparents lives a few decades earlier. A few things still stand out. The pool hall scene, the necklace, and McGovern and Penn at the end. Loved her in Once Upon A Time In America and him since At Close Range with Ronnie Walken and Bad Boys with Clancy Brown and Ally Sheedy (aka weird dandruff girl in The Breakfast Club) 4 great movies of the time. Recommend watching Racing and all the other movies I have referenced in this remembrance if not a revue.