L'amour ne s'achète pas

I love those cheesy 80's teenage love stories. They are fun and entertaining. "Can't Buy Me Love" is one of the better ones for sure. It is one of those movies that you can watch over and over and still love it. The story is interesting and the performances are great. Amanda Peterson is fantastic as the high-priced yet emotionally repressed love interest of lawnboy Patrick Dempsey. The story is funny and moving and can even make you cry. Watch it with friends, watch it alone, watch it with someone you love and remember the pressures of high school and the friends that got you through it.

A high school boy saves up 2000 dollars for a new telescope, but winds up spending it for a girlfriend. She was the most popular girl at school, and needed the money to replace her mother's jacket that she [the girl] had ruined. In return, the girl must date the boy for a month, making him suddenly popular, something he isn't used to at all. Of course, he is found out eventually, and all his new "friends" turn against him. A picture which is well worth seeing.

I guess in the case of this movie you could say "you might get what you paid for". The messages in this movie are pretty clear. They are made easy to identify by many simple one dimensional supporting characters and a few scenes devoted to clearly spelling a message out. This movie is extremely stereotypical, but it was made in and about a very stereotypical time, so I don't think they went too far in portraying these characters as their stereotypes and little else. The messages and characters will seem very familiar to those of us who grew up and went to high school in the 80's, but may be be lost on teenagers today. All of that said this is basically a pretty good movie, that I can never turn off when I happen to catch it on cable. The performances are very good by the main characters and reasonably good by some of the supporting characters and the scenes move well without any wasted time. There is very little build up to any of the movies scenes, so there is really something going on all the time.

Not in the same class as The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles, but very watchable and enjoyable.

The geek Ronald Miller (Patrick Dempsey) lives with his parents and his younger brother in the suburb and works hard during his vacation mowing lawn for neighbors to save one-thousand dollars to buy a telescope. Ronald is part of an outcast group of nerds with his friend Kenneth Wurman (Courtney Gains) and has a crush on his neighbor, the popular cheerleader Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson). When the expensive coat of Cindy is damaged in a party, she goes to the store to propose a deal to the owner to buy another one. Ronald sees and offer one-thousand dollars to buy the coat for her provided she pretends to be his girlfriend for a month. Cindy accepts the deal and Ronald becomes a popular teenager at school. He changes his personality, leaves his nerd friends but four months later he leans the price he has to pay for his achievement.

"Can't Buy Me Love" is a sweet movie from the 80´s with funny moments and a good moral lesson. Ronald Miller learning how to dance in an African show and then repeating the movements in a party at school is maybe the funniest scene. The criticism to people that change the behavior to be popular is also great as well as those that follows these false leaders no matter how ridiculous they are. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Namorada de Aluguel" ("Girlfriend for Rent")

I've seen bundles of these teen comedies, and "Can't Buy Me Love" does contain every cliche in the book. But it was made in 1987. This was a little past the dawning of the high school movie, and the characters of the nerd, jock, cheerleader, etc. were just recently created. I don't know. Maybe this movie was even a huge cliche back in the eighties. But I'm still gonna give it the benefit of the doubt.

I catch this movie on TBS quite a lot of times, and I can't help but enjoy it. There are certain cliched scenes that just force me to roll my eyes and sigh, yet I can't change the channel. Well, there are two key elements that make this flyweight teen comedy work: Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson. They both give charming performances, and have a wonderful chemistry. Even though you know exactly what will happen between them, it's still a delight to see them on screen. Dempsey hasn't had a big role in years, and you can technically classify him as a has-been, but he is a good, charismatic actor. And it would've been nice if his career actually took off. As for Peterson, I don't remember her from any other movies, so I have no knowledge of her career. All I know is she's good-looking and I liked her in this movie.

The story is as predictable as you can get, with paperthin characters, but as I said it's good flyweight entertainment. Strictly a guilty pleasure. If I were in the mood for a good--and by that I mean good in quality--high school movie I'd watch "Ghost World" or one of the "American Pie" movies. But if I just want to kick back and watch a cheesy high school movie that will put a smile on my face and contains no intellectual value, I'll watch "Can't Buy Me Love."

Of course, the movie has a "message" at the end about being yourself, and not caring what others think of you, but the message is delivered with the finesse of an after-school special and is strictly pasted on. When you have characters that are so stereotypical and implausible, it's hard to fit in a believable message. But what would a high school movie be without a schmaltzy third act?

That's why I recommend this movie, just as a guilty pleasure. It's far from great, yet undeniably appealing. But please do not bother to analyze this movie. You'll be wasting your time.

My score: 7 (out of 10)