Lost Angels

Really a sweet movie - yes, VERY formulaic, but that does not disqualify any film. Plot - OK, crap. But Sutherland and Horowitz (yes, the guy from Beastie Boys and son of the famous playwright) do well by the roles they are given.

It is the gentle attention that the director give to the characters that makes the movie for me. The two main characters are cast in a very typical ("Ordinary People") situation, but they transcend it with their performances. Sutherland could easily have coasted through this movie for the paycheck, but doesn't. Adam Horowitz could have just posed and postured - but doesn't.

Or I'm nuts - could be. There is no harm, however, in a feel-good story that doesn't cheat on the difficulties of the characters' situations or their needs. This plot may speed past them, but the performances give them depth.

Honest sentiment is no crime - and I would claim that Sutherland and Horowitz give nuanced performances (not exactly typical for either).

Being a teenager in the 80s and growing up in the Los Angeles area myself, this movie appealed to me because of the obvious relate-ability to it. Adrock sure did a stupendous job, especially being that it was his debut in a film. We always think of him as the crazy, funny and party-animal beastie boy, but here he was a dramatic, lost and frustrated protagonist looking to find his way amongst a myriad of issues. This film depicts the consequences of Reaganomics and how the 80s culture-especially amongst white Americans-worshiped greed and money. In this quest to have all the better things in life-which often was because of both the father and mother having careers-the kids become lost and bored and turned to things like drugs, sex, booze, partying non-stop, recklessness, gangs etc. It is interesting how a motif is the Latino gang lifestyle (his nickname was "chino") and how many young white males succumbed to that, especially in Southern California, in their quest to want to feel apart of something and seem important. Little did they know, but the filmmakers foreshadowed a major theme of the 1990s by doing this. The plot was mediocre, but it was the superb acting by Sutherland and Horovitz, and their chemistry along with how the film captured the end result of what happens when greed is god (this film was made in 89) and a seque into the the problems that these lost kids continued on with in the 90s. By that token, it is now a cult classic. I hear many people complain about the ending; I do not think the ending was too bad. Sure, it seems sugarcoated, but the protagonist found himself through the feeling he was able to care for someone else--the Donald Sutherland character. Because of this, he found his way back home.

All you really need to know about this movie is that its the first time I ever saw Michael Bolton in a movie. No, not the singer, but the character from Office Space. He plays a minor role as a wise ass in rehab named Carlo. He has some really funny lines and is a good example of the different kind of rebellious teens the 80's produced. You can see how we all became underachievers and slackers by watching this movie. It has a pretty good message about joint income families producing lazy, drug addicted, sex crazed, hyper active, non attentive kids. The movie isnt that great, but the insite into what was going on in the wake of Reaganomics is really important. Its a good capstone for movies like repo man, rad, thrashin, less than zero, and so on. Not that theres much in common here, but the genre is the same. This movie is pretty much an expanded after school special. But the gang and club scenes are great. Theres some decent dialogue and some 80's music. Its worth renting if your from this era, most younger wont get it, most older wont understand. 7 of 10*'s

I was really moved by this movie. I grew up in similar circumstances and was really able to relate to what was happening to the character. Growing up in the city around drugs crime can really wear a kid thin. If you don't make the right choices you'll end up either dead or in jail. This movie portrayed exactly that, but it's happy ending was unnecessary.

The technologist tribe gave you idiots all this leisure time, from the steam engine to the washing machine to the little glow-box spy-tech phones you glue to your heads. And this is what the privileged upper-class white boys to with that leisure time. Not to learn and explore and care and improve, but to just become wastrels. This is not an entertainment movie but more a documentary about the collapse of American greatness. That old saw, "From rags to riches to rags, in three generations" is evident here. I don't know who is worse, the phony grinding strivers, or their juvenile delinquents.

Yeah, the production values are dated, but this is still a well-made flick. When I lived in Silicon Valley I commented how San Jose did not really have a ghetto, like Cleveland and Detroit, cities I had also lived in. A guy I met at traffic school (the second one run like a therapy session) told me the real wastrels were in Mountain View, the rich suburb. He explained the parents did not raise their kids. They just gave 'em 300-dollar shoes and a car, and told them to not bother them. So the kids ran wild. But since mommy and daddy were middle-class, they could buy their kids out of trouble, unlike in the inner city.

I also saw the middle-class kids trying to be bad, whether it was with Mafia wanna-bees in Cleveland or outlaw motorcycle gangs in Cali. One nice thing is that it is not hard to cast this movie in LA. These nepo-baby wastrels are everywhere. Perhaps the whole acting profession is a form of delinquency.

So a whole lot of this movie rang true, though it is a bit '80s dated. If you can apply the principles to today, the story still holds up. After all, going to a party-school college and taking a party major is just a more socially acceptable form of juvenile delinquency. A solid 7, good to kill time until Astrid comes on PBS at 10:00.