Genre Guesstimation – Modern Girls (1986)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s genre has been chosen by Todd of The Forgotten Filmz Podcast and we will be reviewing our favorite 80’s Teen Films.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Sep by sending them to teentodd@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Todd!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of 80’s Teen Films…..

“I see God doing his laundry, and he doesn’t have any change… ” – Tanya

Number of Times Seen – 1 (9 Sep 2020)

Brief Synopsis – Three single friends deal with the LA night life which seeking true love.

My Take on it – I decided that in order to make my guest choices of the Genre for the Genre Grandeur series more personal (and expand my own personal horizons of these genres), I will take a recommendation from my guest for a film to watch for this Genre Guesstimation series.

This movie was Todd’s choice for me to watch.

I was actually surprised that I had not only never seen this movie, but hadn’t even heard of it until Todd suggested that I watch it.

The film has a great cast with Virginia Madsen, Cynthia Gibb and Daphne Zuniga playing the three leads.

Unfortunately tho, the story itself is quite underwhelming and that hurts things too much.

These characters get into some very strange and weird antics along their journey through the night but the fact that they never develop the characters well enough is problematic since it makes things even harder to are about them or anything that happens to them along the way.

They depict the 80’s club scenes quite well but the story feel far too dated and doesn’t hold up well enough 35 years after it was made.

They do present the tight friendship between these character quite well and that is a good reason to watch this even if the story itself is presented in a very haphazardly way.

Bottom Line – Film with a great cast yet the story is very underwhelming. The antics that these characters get into are fun but it’s so difficult to care about any of them or about anything that happens to them along their journey. The 80’s club scene is depicted quite well even if it all feels very dated when looking at things after 35 years. The movie is able to capture the friendship of these characters really well despite the way that things are presented in a hap-hazardous way.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Released just after Thanksgiving, the film had a dismal run at the box office and barely made over $250,000 dollars. However, it found a second life as a late-night staple on HBO, which was in the process of becoming a force in home cable. The movie was shown in such heavy rotation that watching it on HBO became a rite-of-passage for many adolescents in the late 1980s, leading to it developing a cult following. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not really. Fun cast and story that fails to be enjoyable enough.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)