leohanauer
Hello!I saw "My Bodyguard " in English class and i think this movie is a good movie because the movie tells the story of a bully child (Clifford Peache) and its Bodyguard (Ricky Linderman).This movie tells about a bully man (Clifford) .Cliffor is in sophomore year and he as a new stunden in High School in Chicago .He is bullied by Moody .Moody wants him to pay one dollar a day .Clifford refuses to pay and he wants Linderman to protect him but Linderman is not interested ...You have watched the film to see what happens !I think Clifford (Chris Makepeace) is a good actor . He's a very talented actor.The actors are very talented . Moody looks very much like a school bully. The teachers are not realistic because our teachers would never be so lax.This movie is great . This is a drama and funny movie .
SnoopyStyle
15 year old Clifford Peache (Chris Makepeace) lives in Chicago luxury hotel Ambassador East with his eccentric grandmother (Ruth Gordon) and his father (Martin Mull) who manages the hotel. He's the new kid in high school. Clifford quickly gets into trouble with school bully Melvin Moody (Matt Dillon) and his group of tough guys. Lots of smaller kids pay protection money to Moody. Moody is reported to the school which only gets Clifford picked on secretly. Shelley (Joan Cusack) is desperate to be popular but Moody keeps making fun of her. Clifford befriends and tries to hire sullen giant student Ricky Linderman (Adam Baldwin) who is rumored to have killed somebody.This movie would work a lot better with less screen time for the adults. They are a way out for Clifford and keeps the tension down. The point is to keep his options limited. Also time spent with his family is wasted. It adds very little to the movie. Although Linderman has a good time with the Peaches. I would keep that section with the adults. Chris Makepeace is a pretty good teen actor especially in a role like this. The friendship is pretty good. The final fight is a little awkward. It's pushing believability to have Clifford win in a solo fight against Moody. It's also weird to have Linderman keep sending the poor kid back into the fight.
mattkratz
This is truly a gem of a movie-a great drama! It's a story about making friends, fitting in, and people "with a past." A kid moves into a new school in Chicago and becomes the new target of the resident bully who makes it a habit of extorting lunch money from kids. The new kid also makes new friends and learns about a mysterious other kid. He enlists that kid's help in guarding against the bully, learns from third parties about a horrible secret that kid harbors, and does his best to make friends despite the other kid's misgivings. Of course complications arise before a terrific ending with a hilarious final scene. I think this features wonderful performances all around (especially by the leads and the kids) and is a terrific film and a must-see for everyone. You will love it if you see it! *** 1/2 out of ****
TxMike
I somehow missed this one in the 1980s. I was able to watch it via Netflix streaming movies. It is about a new kid at a Chicago public high school, 10th grade, and right away he encounters the local kid bully, who makes the weaker kids pay him every day for "protection." But the new kid refuses, and soon his time at school is made miserable by the bully and his friends.Chris Makepeace, who doesn't seem to have gone anywhere as an actor, was 15-yr-old Clifford. His mom had died, and his dad was the manager of a nice hotel in downtown Chicago. His eccentric grandmother lived with them. A very young and somewhat small Matt Dillon was the pretty boy bully, Moody. He played this role very well. But the one I liked most was Adam Baldwin, making his movie debut as the bigger, taller, but troubled student Linderman. None of the other kids wanted to get near him, and rumors were that he had killed people. But Clifford decided to befriend him, and ask him to be his "bodyguard", and in return he would pay him and help him with his homework. (Note, Baldwin, now in his 40s, is currently in a recurring role as a CIA agent in the TV series 'Chuck.') Another interesting young actress was a teenage Joan Cusack as one of the students, Shelley.Anyway the "bodyguard" thing didn't quite work out, Linderman didn't really want anything to do with that, but he and Clifford became friends anyway, and they went scrap yard hunting together, to find parts for an old motorcycle Linderman was rebuilding. Many of the scenes were shot in Lincoln Park, a place we visited a couple of years ago, it was fun seeing it from 30 years back.Nice movie, a chance to pull for the good guys. SPOILERS: The reason Linderman didn't want to get involved, he had accidentally been responsible for his kid brother getting shot and killed when the two of them were playing with a loaded pistol at home. Linderman lied to authorities, said he found the gun in his brother's hand, when in fact it was in his own hand when the shot was fired. So when Moody hired his own, somewhat older "bodyguard" Mike, in a confrontation in the park Linderman not only did not fight, he let them take his motorcycle, dump it in the pond, then he ran away. However after admitting to Clifford what his real issue was, in a second confrontation in the park, while retrieving his motorcycle, Linderman had to fight, and beat up Mike, while Clifford fought, and broke Moody's nose, with some coaching from Linderman. Thus the two bullies were neutralized and presumably all was going to be well.
