Lucas

Lucas (1986)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: David Seltzer

Starring: Corey Haim (RIP), Kerri Green, Charlie Sheen, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Jeremy Piven

From: 20th Century Fox

I wasn’t planning on writing about this next, but early Wednesday afternoon I heard the news about Corey Haim passing away due to-shock of shocks-an OD, yet another Hollywood casualty. It happens far too often for a former famous face to experience a downturn and due to not being able to handle that, they turn to drugs and it ends in arrests, embarrassment, and too frequently, a sad sad end. Instead of worrying about that sad stuff, let’s talk about an entertaining film from the 80’s concerning teenagers but it’s not a sex comedy or a juvenile tripe-fest. Rather, this is a smart film about how teenage life is like.

It concerns the title character (Haim), a very smart (yet awkward) 14 year old nerd who is so smart he’s ahead a grade or two and is in high school already. He gets treated like crap due to him being different, something that I know far too well. Anyhow, it’s the summer and one day he meets the new girl in town, the older Maggie (Green), and they become friends during the long break from school. But, Lucas would like to be more than friends with Maggie… she doesn’t reciprocate and instead just wants to be pals. That causes conflict. Meanwhile, Cappie (Sheen) is a jock but he turns out to be a good guy (insert your own jokes concerning Sheen’s off the screen troubles); he and Lucas get along as Cappie was sick and Lucas gave him his schoolwork after each day of academic studies. The jock has a GF (Thorne-Smith) but he ends up falling for Maggie, as hey, she’s a nice-looking redhead-and she still is, by the way-and even though she and him try to be nice to Lucas about it, he gets jealous eyes and as he’s a dorky teen, he acts like a dick. From there…

I won’t spoil the rest but I will tell you that it’s a drama with comedic moments (Lucas feuds with a pair of jock bullies, one of whom is played by Piven; for some reason, it seems like he gets typecast as the douche character; Lucas mouths off to those guys in a humorous manner, resulting in the expected consequences) and it is filled with many nice scenes and even though it can be dialogue-heavy at times, it’s all good and engrossing. Plus, you get to see the debut of Winona Ryder, another person who had trouble later in life but it’s mundane compared to some of the others in the cast. This nice movie about teenage life is easy to find, so if it sound interesting to you, I clearly recommend checking this out.