Trading Favors

Where in the heck can you watch this movie??? I haven't seen it in years.

High school nerd meets free spirit/jailbroke Rosanna Arquette and sets out on crime spree and journey of life. Similar to HIT AND RUN and SOMETHING WILD, it turns very mean and bloody in the last 20 mins, when Arquette's thug boyfriend shows up. Alanna Ubach has nice cameo as white trash bar pickup, but the scene is as pointless as the rest of the picture. Arquette's character is more annoying than appealing (remember her GREAT cameo in the otherwise blah TVM THE 60s, as an SF hippie chick? inspired casting). Pretty poor, except for a few minutes with Ubach, and of course Rosanna in the tub.

Although this is a good story with a few surprising twists to keep you watching, if it were not for Rosanna Arquette this movie would not be worth seeing.

To lanamoore..I have found some cheap VHS copies on eBay. Had no luck on DVDs except in Polish.

There were several copies in VHS. I have been looking to.

This film, directed by Sondra Locke, suffers from the plodding pace that is all-too-familiar in movies helmed by "serious" female directors. With essentially no comic relief, TRADING FAVORS crawls from beginning to end, getting no help from the anemic Devon Gummersall (from the TV series FELICITY), who delivers passionless rote in the male lead. Rosanna Arquette is another matter, however. At age 38 when this was filmed, her appearance in a prolonged topless bathtub scene shows that physically she is in her prime, and her acting is just as superb as her looks. It is a shame she gets little or no work in big-budget movies, to which she could bring a good measure of class and glamour.