Lucas (1986, Dir. David Seltzer)

Synopsis:

When awkward, nerdy, insect-loving 14 year old Lucas (Corey Haim) befriends 16 year old new girl in town, Maggie (Kerri Green); he instantly falls in love with her, whilst she clearly sees him as a friend. When high school football hero, Cappy, (Charlie Sheen) – who sticks up for Lucas, due to Lucas looking after him when he was ill at one point – meets Maggie, it’s clear that Lucas‘ heart is destined to be broken. So, in an effort to get Maggie to take him seriously, he decides to try out for the football team himself.

After the seeming success of last year’s series on underrated sci-fi films, for the rest of this year I’ll be looking at underrated films from the 1980s. With Valentines Day just around the corner we start with this largely overlooked coming-of-age story of teenage unrequited love, that deserves to be far better known than it is.

Some underrated films, seem to be ignored despite critical acclaim and a great cast. Such is the case with Lucas, a little gem of a film that was well received upon release (at least in the U.S.- I have no idea how wide a release it received worldwide) but is now principally remembered, in passing, as Winona Ryder‘s screen debut.

As good as Ryder is in her relatively small but important role as Rina, the shy girl who likes Lucas, it’s one of many great performances in in a film full of them. Just as it’s easy to see why Ryder went on to bigger roles after this, it’s equally perplexing to know that Kerri Green, who plays Maggie, didn’t really do much else in the way of acting afterwards. Both here and in her much more well known role in The Goonies, she showed herself to be a talented, quirky young actress who managed to inject the rather stereotypical role of the „pretty girl next door“ with enough personality that her characters seemed far more believable and human than they probably did on the page. So it’s a great shame then that, for whatever reason, she seems to have retired from acting within a couple of years of making this film; as I feel sure she could have gone on to more interesting parts as an adult.

If you’re mostly familiar with Corey Haim through his roles as a teen heart throb in films such as The Lost Boys, then his performance here will be as much of a revelation to you as it was to me. He gives a beautifully understated performance in the title role here, which (for someone who also spent most of his teens falling hopelessly in love with older girls who weren’t interested in him) is painfully true to life. Apparently, Haim (who was actually the same age as his character when he made the film) was completely besotted with the much older Green (she was 18 at the time, rather than 16 as she is in the film) in reality and channeled his unrequited love for her into his on-screen portrayal.

Charlie Sheen had already appeared in a number of films by the time this movie was made and gives a really good performance of a character that is far more three dimensional than high school football heroes generally are. Which makes the rumor that he coerced the underage Haim into having sex with him whilst making the film, all the more disturbing.

Off-screen scandals aside, the film continues to stand as a painfully honest and bitter sweet look at teenage life. Unlike many teen movies, it doesn’t resort to cheap laughs or an unrealistic „unlikely hero saves the Day“ ending – instead going for realism above all else. Lucas doesn’t get The girl or save the day – though he does become a hero of sorts. Even his triumph at the end of the film is muted, however, so the conclusion feels both satisfactory and realistic in way that no other teen movie, except perhaps Gregory‘s Girl has done.

In a superb scene, where all the main characters are singing in a school choir; the camera brilliantly follows the furtive glances of Ryder watching Haim, who is watching Green, who is watching and being watched by Sheen whilst being observed by Sheen’s character’s girlfriend Alise (Courtney Thorne-Smith). This small, dialogue free moment, says more in 2 minutes than many teen movies do in their entire running time, making the film’s relative obscurity all the more tragic. Do yourself a favor and discover it.