Ça plane, les filles!

Four teenage girls in a suburb of Los Angeles get into all kinds of trouble: parties, drugs, cops, mixed-up parents, older boyfriends. Jodie Foster, the group's level-headed mother hen, tries keeping everyone together "like a family" (like the family unit she's never had), and the heartbreaking thing about the movie is that she can't. Slowly, everyone grows up and goes away. THAT precise plot point, though underscored throughout, is unfortunately tampered with. Did we really need a long sequence with Scott Baio outracing a car full of thugs on his skateboard? Or an even longer sequence--also with Baio--where Foster has a strange soliloquy about pain as an illusion. Some of the dialogue in fact is downright loopy, and I didn't much care for an edit in the third act which segues clumsily from a death to a wedding. But these are nitpicks in what is basically a very sensitive story about the loss of a tight bond. And Jodie's face at the ending speaks volumes. If viewers do get choked up, the movie has earned this. The film doesn't pander for tears or ask for sympathy--it shows us an example of friendship and hopes we understand. *** from ****

If you weren't there, then unfortunately this movie will be beyond compassion for you. Which as I say is a shame because although some of the acting is amateurish, it is meant to be for realism. Let's face it--in real life, we don't say things in an exacting or perfect way, even when we mean to. In this sense, it works. This, however, does not apply to our "known" actors in this film, notably Jodie Foster (born a natural). The fact that the other 3 girls are not accomplished only adds to the story--Jodie plays the glue that struggles to keep their friendship close, even with the obvious feeling of fatality. Meaning that no matter how close friends are, eventually there are some people that just fade away, no matter how you try.

And therein is the core of the movie. It's not about partying, it's not about sexuality, but about these 4 girls and their final time as still young girls before they have to go the world alone.

If you have ever had a friendship like that in your life, you will feel this movie--it will mean a lot to you, no matter what era it is set in, or what era you grew up in. We all knew these girls in school, or at the very least knew of them. We all knew the frustrated virgin, half wanting to hold onto childhood and half wanting desperately to grow up and thinking that will do it for her. We all knew the boy-crazy one, the fashion plate whose vanity hides her fear of the world, her fear of acceptance. We all knew the party girl, the one they whispered about, with tales of not only her sad home life but of her notorious exploits. And we all knew the "mother figure", the one a little more real, a little more grounded, a little more sad because she knew what would happen. Maybe you were one of those girls. Maybe, like me, you had been each one at one time or another...

This film really captures that fragile time in life when want, needs, pressures, womanhood, childhood, the world and loneliness are all embodied in each female's head, each factor on the precipice. Which aspect do you hang on to? What do you toss over the edge, no matter how you may want to hold on? And how painful is goodbye to everything you've known? That's what this movie is--steps into womanhood while clinging onto childhood, and how damn tough it is to keep walking. If you were there, you know...and love this film, as I do. Aching and tenderly done. A fine piece of captured femininity.

Despite the presence of the always top flight Jodie Foster, Adrian Lyne's soaper about the desperate lives of four teenage girls living in sunny but suffocating Southern California is hampered by movie of the week cliches and a meandering storyline that never really goes anywhere. Divorces, absentee parents, easy access to alcohol and drugs, and a strong dose of hopelessness and ennui drive the foxes of the title to varying levels of destruction. Unless you were at a particularly impressionable age when you first saw the film, Foxes is likely to feel too deliberate and drawn out. It is fun, however, to take a peek at the performances of Scott Baio, Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, Lois Smith, and Cherie Currie (my favorite, though, is Marilyn Kagan as sexually maturing Madge) as well as the histrionics of glammy rockers Angel. Added bonus: Donna Summer sings the theme "On the Radio."

Totally agree with the previous reviewer that screenwriter and co producer Gerry Ayres and director Adrian Lyne took a good, simple story of a difficult friendship between two teenage gals and inflated it to the point where the central conflict between Jeannie and Annie is lost amid a clutter of sub plots, added characters that contribute very little, like Madge and Jay, and a need for every messed up teen girl to have an equally messed up (or worse) parent. Consequently, when we come to the tragic denouement the impact, while not lost, is certainly lessened. Indeed, if it were not for the fine acting of Jodie Foster and Cheri Currie there would be little reason to watch the film at all other than some nice shots of LA in the early 80s, courtesy of cinematographers Leon Bijou and Michael Seresin, that make even Van Nuys appear painterly. Give it a C plus. PS...I like Donna Summer as much as the next guy (or gal) but if they played "On The Radio" one more time I was gonna toss my radio through the goddamn tv screen!

Boy-crazy Deirdre, virgin Madge, Annie Mallick (Cherie Currie), and Jeanie (Jodie Foster) are best friends in the San Fernando Valley. Jeanie has problems with her single mom Mary (Sally Kellerman). Annie keeps running away from her troubled parents and her policeman father wants to institutionalize her. Brad (Scott Baio) is a guy friend. Madge starts dating older Jay Thompson (Randy Quaid).

In very broad strokes, this is Little Women thrown into the L. A. scene. The female friendships are unbreakable. It's very teenage angst, chaotic, and young girls searching for love. It has quite a few interesting young faces. I do wish for it to pick a story and stick with it. It meanders around. In a way, it's a teenage world. With such a scatter-shot plot, it sometimes does hit on something interesting. I also wonder if it needs a female voice with the writing. The girls do give it a good sense of reality. Cherie Currie and Jodie Foster have magnetic presences. It's an interesting early movie about 80's teen culture.