Just One of the Guys

I love 80's teen movies. They are my guilty pleasure, plus takes me back to a time when I was a teenager. 80's teen movies are the best because they were fun, goofy and funny, not the angry, brooding, violent teen junk of today. This is one of the best!

This is one of those "dumb" movies that I like a lot. The set up is totally unbelievable. What teenage girl could independently go "undercover" as a teenage male student in another High School for the sake of a school newspaper article? Well, of course, it can't be done. If our heroine truly were as vain as she appears to be, she would not wreck her good looks just for an award. Indeed, for most the response to being denied an award because of our sex is most likely indignation and outrage rather than concocting some outlandish plot to "show 'em what I'm really made of".

All that being said, this is a delicious comedy. Those that complain that Joyce Heiser can't cut it as a "male" miss the point. If Heiser were any more convincing as a male half the humor would fall flat and we would run the risk of turning into just another piece of feminist party line storytelling.

Instead we find Heiser discovering that while she had been treated unfairly she was a frivolous person. The insight she gains in seeing the world from another viewpoint matures her and leads her to find love where she never would have looked. Moreover, while she triumphs and proves her point, Heiser comes to find out that she isn't the only one who can be hurt by other people. Her entire plot was cruel to the person she learned to care about most during her adventure.

But this analysis while true also misleads. The seriousness of Just One Of The Guys is vastly overwhelmed by the girl-in-disguise comedy this movie plays so well. The story does take place in the 1980's we have all come to hate so much; but the story excels over these trappings.

Ah the 80's. You gotta love it. The films that came out of the 80's, most notably the teen films, have always been and will always be the best teens movies. A decent one will come along every now and then today, but the 80's still rule the teen genre. And surprise, surprise, this film is one of the few that wasn't done by John Hughes. As a child of the 80's, I grew up with films like these. This one in particular I must have seen a hundred times. The film centers around a young, pretty high schooler named Terry(played the beautiful and obviously very talented Joyce Hyser). Terry is all girl. Dresses in a lot of short, skin tight clothes(some of which are very, very pink), and stuff in her hair and all that. But when she loses out in a journalistic contest in one of her classes, she feels cheated. She feels that her work was better than what it was graded, but got the slip because she was a girl. This gets Terry to think that guys are treated better than girls simply because they are guys. Setting out to investigate this accusation, Terry cuts her hair and disguises herself as a teenage boy and enrolls in a different high school to find out the truth first hand. She runs afoul of the school bully(played by perennial 80's high school jerk, William Zabka of "The Karate Kid" and "Back To School"), and other people, but strikes a chord with shy, nerdy outcast Rick(Clayton Rohner). They build a buddy/buddy relationship that has Terry bringing Rick out of his shell and ends up trying to get him a date for the prom. What ends up of Terry's original purpose of dressing like a boy?. Well, you'll have to find out for yourselves. I am not going to say that the movie is very original, because it's not. Not just because of the dressing up as a guy, or in other films having guys dressing up as girls, but the plot is pretty transparent and you could tell how everything happens way before it actually does. What saves the film and keeps it better than most other 80's teen films, is that the cast is above average, especially Hyser and the hysterical Billy Jacoby, who plays her brother Buddy, and there are a number of moments of true humor and intelligence and heart. While most other films like this were driven by the exploits of raging hormones in teens, and this one no doubt got wrongfully accused of being one of them, it isn't. The teens are all more realistic, and you actually feel for Terry and her depression of not winning the journalism contest and how things are going for her. Hyser delivered a fine comedic performance, and why she didn't go on to bigger and better things is a real shame. Jacoby, as her brother Buddy, is one of the highlights of the film, and he delivers some of his sly dialogue with a sure hand. This film is pure 80's, and I love it. It's nothing special and it will never really be remembered, but it was a better than average teen comedy that strayed from the cluttered pack to make it's own impression. And it did. It's just too bad not too many people noticed.