Gatinhas

Story about four teenage girls growing up in California. Jeanie (Jodie Foster) is the most level-headed of the bunch--but wants to move out of her house where she lives with her divorced mother (Sally Kellerman). Annie (Cherie Currie) is addicted to drugs, alcohol and bad boys and is beaten up by her father. Madge (Marilyn Kagan) has overprotective parents. Deirde (Kandice Stroh) thinks she's more mature than the rest of them.

This is nothing new from what we've seen plenty of times before--but this one has one big difference--it's accurate. I graduated from high school in 1980 (when I first saw the film) and I was surprised at how realistic it was. They got the dialogue, clothes and attitudes down completely right. Even the main song of the movie ("On the Radio" by Donna Summer) was a big hit before this came out. This film hit me harder than any other teen film of the time because I could understand and relate to the characters. I knew girls in high school who were just like this! The film is (of course) dated but it captures a time we will never see again.

The acting is good on all counts with Foster giving the best performance. The relationship between her and Kellerman (who was excellent) was realistic and well-done. Even Scott Baio (who has a small role as a friend of the girls) more or less realistically played a teen boy.

A very good movie--essential viewing if you came of age in 1980. The film has a deserved R rating (plenty of drug use and swearing) but should be seen by all teens. I give it a 8.

Privileged Valley girls discover that they are not immune to the consequences of their bad decisions.

I was not impressed by this movie on my first viewing, more than forty years ago, but a chance to see it on Turner Classic Movies after I had forgotten everything about it revealed a better movie and a more mature understanding of what the film makers were trying to say. The young women, led by Jodie Foster and Cherie Currie, don't understand the costs of what they are doing, between the drinking, the sex, and the hard partying that leaves the parents angry at the sheer destruction. Like the contemporaneous LITTLE DARLINGS, it failed because it didn't really understand who its audience was, and what they would enjoy seeing. The older segment of the audience was angry at the young women, and the younger portions didn't care for the unhappy ending with its inherent moralizing.

Having grown up with the East Coast bracket of privileged young people, I can say the attitudes were precisely on point. With Scott Baio, Sally Kellerman, Randy Quaid, and Laura Dern.

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."

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.

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!