Popularity at a price, $1,000
Can’t Buy Me Love doesn’t start out like every other romantic comedy that’s been made, where the guy likes the girl and she wants nothing to do with him. Instead of the hating each other Cindy and Ronald simply strike up a deal, $1,000 for a month of popularity and fake love from the head cheerleader. Young Patrick Dempsey, later known for his role as Derek in Grey’s Anatomy, plays the geeky and ambitious Ronald Miller, to Amanda Peterson’s head cheerleader, Cindy Mancini.
The film takes us through your average American High School filled with the stereotypes of nerds- Dempsey, dumb jocks- best played by Eric Bruskotter, perhaps better known for his role as Rube Baker in Major League and Major League 2: Back to the Minors, pretty girls- Peterson, and every other kind of teenager. Like some of us these students all grew up together in the same elementary school, but as the years went by, found “their places” in the high school society, some rising in the ranks and others falling. The film is also filled with music from the 80’s from The Beetles to Curiosity Killed the Cat. The soundtrack of the film features many stars as seen above and goes great with scenes.
Perhaps the film’s most iconic scene is at the school dance. Dempsey having just “broken up” with Peterson, takes one of her friends claiming to have “moves that defy gravity”. I don’t know about defying gravity, but they sure defy something, perhaps the laws of how a human being should move on the dance floor. His newly learned moves come from him mistaking a PBS program for the American Bandstand and learning the moves of the African Anteaters mating ritual. His new found popularity saved him from, what we can only assume would have been one of the worst humiliations a teenager could imagine.
The film takes us on a rollercoaster as Dempsey climbs from “totally geek to totally chic”, gets the title of a heartbreaker, falls from “totally chic to totally geek”, and finally rides off into the sunset with the girl, on a lawnmower. As Dempsey gets the popularity he loses his friends and himself. He gives into the need to be liked or at least envied by all of his fellow students, but as I’m sure you guessed in the end he not only finds himself, but falls in love and gets his friends back. In a way, a person could say the film addresses the issue of being true to oneself. If you were looking for a lesson, that have to be it, and if you were looking to learn how to dance, well then I guess you would have to keep looking.
While Dempsey’s career seemed to take off after the production of Can’t Buy Me Love and his win of Best Young Actor in a Motion Picture, the other actors still had a hard time making it out of the television section of entertainment. While Bruskotter, made it into both Major League and Major League 2, those were his big achievements and Peterson, didn’t even make it that far, she seemed to get stuck back in the television area. While Dempsey did make it out of the of the TV for some time to do more romantic comedies like, Valentine’s Day, Made of Honor, and Enchanted, he did eventually get back into our lives every Thursday night on the hit television show Grey’s Anatomy, which some might say has been his biggest success yet.
The film is comparable to Pretty Woman in the sense that a man buys a woman’s services (I use this term quite loosely, as there is no evidence that Peterson provided sexual favors, unlike Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman) for sometime and eventually they end up falling in love. The fact that there is more than one film where a prostitute and the man paying for the prostitute’s services fall in love, gives the idea that this is common. It gives us the idea that prostitution is some how “not that bad”. It tells young people “it is ok to sell your body and who knows you might fall in love along the way”. While in actuality, the fact is that prostitution is illegal and a very serious problem, but that’s the film industry for you making light of those serious issues.
Overall, Can’t Buy Me Love was one of the better film’s that I have seen from the 80’s, but then again I haven’t seen many movies that were made during that era. The film was definitely better than some of the romantic comedies that have been made recently. Also seeing young Patrick Dempsey and comparing seeing how far he has come to where he is today was pretty neat. If you’re bored out of your mind and have access to Netflix, I would have say that there are other films I would recommend to someone before this one, but it maybe on the list.
