La ragazza di San Diego

30 year old teenagers dancing to 80s songs with poor singing voices. Cheesy love story between two teenagers of different worlds. Why is this even a movie? Maybe Hollywood can stop making remakes. Because they are usually not entertaining.

Made by people looking for a quick buck, this pale version of an entertaining 80's flick has some cute moments but it all falls flat without any substance. Like so many things Hollywood, the people behind this are wannabe's thinking all it takes to make a film is hard work and investment capital. The original, also with faults, had charm and a breakout performance from Nicholas Cage to distinguish it. This one has little of anything to add to the original but imitation.

Do yourself a favour and watch the original movie. 80s teen movies were far better and these dull silly hollywood remakes only suffer more by comparison.

I have to start by saying that the original is still one of my all-time favorite films. I was 16 and growing up in Pasadena, California when it was released. I began my 35-year career as a DJ a few months before that. Later, I was an intern at KROQ in 1987 and lived and worked in the San Fernando Valley in my early adulthood. I still have my original VHS copy of it, as well as a DVD, and a vinyl copy of the original soundtrack.

The review of this film by moderniste is spot-on and perfectly correct. This version can't hold a candle to the original in terms of actual Los Angeles early 80s New Wave/Post-Punk culture. The filmmakers tried too hard to reference 80s pop culture and like, totally lost the substance of it, dude, fer sure. Then again, making it into a musical, and a Disney-esque one at that, was clearly poor judgement.

I gave it 5 stars because I like a lot of the music that was used and I'm being forgiving of all of the allowances that the writer(s) thought had to be made for post-Generation X audiences. Making the party that Randy and Julie took off from into a costume party where everyone was dressed as a pop culture icon was an interesting twist, although they obviously felt they had to explain each costume (though to be honest, I would have missed the Dukes of Hazzard reference).

Having KROQ host a prom is something that wouldn't have happened. I was the DJ at many Southland proms in that time period that had Roq Joq come for a couple of hours, but I don't remember Raechel Donahue ever doing an appearance, and Rodney Bingenheimer definitely would not have. It would likely have been Richard Blade, "Swedish" Egil Aalvik, Jim "Poor Man" Trenton, Jed "the Fish" Gould, or possibly Freddy Snakeskin.

Having said all of that, homages rarely stand up to the original, but kudos to the film's producers for paying tribute to a totally trippendicular cult classic, albeit in a 2020 way. As I mentioned, the idea of making it a musical was a misfire, but to fair, if they had tried to re-make the original, it almost certainly would've also fallen flat, especially if they didn't consult with people who were there in those days. It would be pretty much impossible to duplicate the perfection of Deborah Foreman and Nicholas Cage in the original anyway.

I don't mind the musical format change. It doesn't bother me that the script was altered in key spots. The main area where this movie falls short is where the original movie succeeded. The music was skewed to the pop and completely ignored the punk music. There was a distinct line in the original of two sets of behaviors and music and this movie had both sides focus on the pop. Besides some wardrobe changes both sets of people acted the same.

The biggest fail here was a misunderstanding what a valley girl was and how she behaved. They threw some one liners in the movie, but completely MISSED the essence of the valley girl. These valley girls and boys acted like regular kids and threw in some period phrases and that is not even close.

I like some of the story changes and if they got the point of the original movie and did some research on valley speak and act, it would have been good.