StyleSk8r
At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.
SnoopyStyle
It's 1942. Henry 'Hopper' Nash (Sean Penn) and Nicky (Nicolas Cage) are small town best friends drafted into the Marines. With deployment weeks away, they work at the local bowling alley setting pins and chase girls. Hopper is infatuated with rich newcomer Caddie Winger (Elizabeth McGovern) but she's secretly the maid's daughter. Nicky gets Sally Kaiser pregnant and needs $150 for the abortion. Hopper and Nicky get beaten by Navy sailors after trying to hustle them playing pool. Hopper asks Caddie for the money.The first half is a slow coming-of-age romance. The second half takes some more intense turns. The problem is that Sally don't have much screen time before then. The movie doesn't invest that much in her plight. This is about Hopper and Caddie. Ultimately, it's a device to get at their own story. It's nice to see these great actors in their youth and there is a bitter sweet romance here.
FatMan-QaTFM
Oh boy oh boy! I'm up to 32 Nick Cage movies watched! Crossed the halfway point with this gem and Bringing Out the Dead.What do we have here? A coming of age drama in which Nick Cage plays an idiotic womanizer who uses his friends? And do we also have a moody, whiny Sean Penn to boot? What more could I ask for?? Although it seems to have killed his career as a director, Richard Benjamin at least had the decency to shoot it in 1.85:1, unlike Zandalee.The story involved Nicky (Nick Cage... hmm), his friend Henry (Sean Penn), and Henry's chubby chunkin' cheeked love interest, Caddie (Elizabeth McGovern). Nicky loves to run the gauntlet of loose women in town, while Henry is a one-girl man. All heck breaks loose when Nicky impregnates a girl and convinces her to abort it. Hilarity ensues as they are ushered off to war after doing a lot of yelling and moping.Favorite Nick Cage Line: "Wow, 200 bucks a shot. That's some business, huh?"Favorite Nick Cage Moment: When he's driving his hot rod away from the abortion, swigging from a booze bottle. Classy.Gotta be honest, I had to look up a script to even find a decent NC line in the entire movie. Unlike many of his movies, it wasn't so much embarrassing as it was boring. Surprisingly, there were some saucy scenes in this (for whatever reason) PG movie underscored by a sensual saxophone soundtrack.
Robert J. Maxwell
Two seventeen-year-old chums, Sean Penn and Nicholas Cage, have about two months before they leave for Marine Corps boot camp in the early years of World War II. Their adventures vary. Penn falls in love with Elizabeth McGovern but is concerned that she might be too rich for him, which she isn't. (Her mother is merely a maid in a large Victorian mansion.) Cage is the more reckless of the two, a drinker who gets his girl pregnant and has to borrow the abortion money from Penn, who has to borrow it from McGovern, who has to borrow it from her wealthy friend. Penn and Cage leave a little wreckage behind but the departure for the Marines is about as close an approximation of happiness that they're liable to see for a while.It's a puzzling movie, with echoes of autobiographical first stories. It looks like a movie about the author's youth and seems to be an attempt to convey to the audience the emotions that accompanied his early experiences. It resembles other youth movies about the war years. "Hope and Glory" and "Summer of 42" come to mind. Yet the screenwriter was only in his early thirties. Maybe it's something passed on to him by his Dad, in rough form. Maybe it was a gift of the muse.Whatever it was the production design and location shooting are phenomenal. Makes you want to live in that picturesque and amiable little town of Point Muir, California, up in Mendocino County, even though the movie, supposedly shot around Christmas, must have been shot in the summer. (In the winter, every outdoor scene would have been rained out.) Wardrobe, set dressing, and make up are accurate to the period, and Dave Grusin's musical score is apt.The script, though it has its drama and suspenseful comedy, is pretty leisurely. The war and the possibility of death hangs over everything like a translucent gray shroud but the events and conflicts we see are small in scale. That's as it should be.The writer pulls a couple of literary stunts. Early on, there are allusions to Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Homer. I can believe that Penn's father, a grave digger by profession, can say something about "a rose by any other name," but I don't know where a gravedigger would come up with his name for his dog -- Argos. And when they spot McGovern entering the mansion, thinking that her family owns it, Cage remarks that "she's a Gatsby." And Penn understands at once. Okay, I had to read "The Great Gatsby" in high school too but I don't know about today's kids getting it. Last time I checked, the only student in my class who'd read it, got to do so in an advanced placement class in her high school. What a terrible comment on today's youth, he said, gnawing the handle of his cane, his spectacles sliding off into the guacamole, cursing fitfully while searching for his teeth.Well, there's certainly one way in which the golden age of small-town youthful mores was an improvement over the more recent period in which I grew up -- that unplanned pregnancy by Cage's girl friend, and the oh-so-casual way in which, on only their second date, Penn and McGovern exchange bodily fluids. I can guarantee you that there was nothing like that going on in Hillside High School! No, siree, Bob. Man, it was lousy. But, all seriousness aside, I don't believe there was much of it going on in Point Muir in 1942 either. Another stunt by the writer, called modernizing the mores.The movie exudes this slight but undeniable charm. It's quiet and contained. Nobody's head gets wrenched off. I kind of enjoyed it. It's like taking a diachronic vacation from today's problems, even though the vacation spot has problems of its own, and the ones off screen are monumental in scope.
caspian1978
We never get to see the two main characters in the movie go to War. This world war 3 setting coming of age drama is not so much about the war over in Japan but the war on the home front. Growing up in 1943 in small town California, searching for love and meaning. Sean Penn is great in his role. Even more, Nicolas Cage is better as his close friend and side kick. Whether for comic relief of ream moments of edgy drama, Cage delivers. Also, a surprise in the movie is the performance of Elizabeth McGovern who is always beautiful. The three quickly discover life as they grow up before the two boys are shipped out to the Pacific. Michael Madsen and Crispin Glover pop into the movie with small roles. A nice movie, I wasn't expecting much until the movie started. It is a guarantee crowd pleaser.
