I remember my first dance. I grew up in the Sierra Nevada
Foothills outside of Sacramento, and many of us small-towners would
head up to good old 4-H camp during the summer, where we'd hike and
play games and learn about mother nature and all that kind of crap. It
may sound like backwoods hell to most people, but my friends and I had
a blast the couple of years we went. Yet the dance at the end of camp
was the worst. I was a nerdy kid that had no chance as far as
romance with the ladies were concerned, so dancing and interacting
with the fairer sex was just not in the books.
But as clearly
as if it were yesterday, I remember one of our counselors, Christine,
coming up to me as I sat at some picnic tables while the rest of my
cabin was dancing to "Love Bites" by Def Leppard (I'm
serious). She tried to convince me that dancing was fun, that girls
didn't mind if you were very good at it and that if I didn't get out
there and shake what my momma gave me just a little bit, I'd
regret it forever. When none of this convincing worked, she knew just
how to get to me: She referenced a movie. "Like in that one movie
Can't Buy Me Love - just go out there and invent a new dance.
Everybody will think it's great." Christine was, of
course, referencing one of the better scenes in Can't Buy Me Love, a
love-it-or-hate-it coming of age romantic comedy in which our resident
loser-turned-talk-of-the-town thinks he's watching "American
Bandstand", learning new and cool moves, but he really is
watching some interpretive dance segment on public television. So when
he brings the atypical and spasmodic dance (choreographed by a then
relatively-unknown Paula Abdul!) to the Prom, he - of course - looks
like a grade-A idiot for a few seconds, then after a while the entire
student body is shaking their bodies in a unified experimental dance
cycle. This scene was made for poor romantically-challenged
wallflowers like me everywhere, stuck in summer camp with nowhere to
go...
It is also a moment worth the price of admission alone,
but if you missed the film during its theatrical release fifteen years
ago (yeah, we're that old) or its endless showings on cable, you may
find yourself a bit lost. Yes, Can't Buy Me Love is cheesy and
predictable with a hokey story line, but that's why it is such a
beloved artifact of 80's nostalgia. Lead Patrick Dempsey is charming,
and of course there's the always-funny Dennis Dugan, but the film is
as cutesy as it is pedestrian. So if you can't get past the saccharine
one-two punch of this film's basic premise, this DVD may not be for
you. But if you're reading this, you already know you love Can't Buy
Me Love, so here's your chance for a nice walk down memory lane.
Video: How Does The Disc Look?
Aargh! Presented in
4:3 full frame only, this transfer is a disappointment. Sure, Can't
Buy Me Love doesn't have David Lean-esque panoramas, but why finally
release this beloved cult classic on DVD without an accurate
representation of the film's original theatrical aspect ratio? But if
you can stomach the square dimensions, this transfer is decent. The
print is in good shape, with little dirt or blemishes to distract, and
the 80's color scheme is fairly well saturated. Blacks and contrast
are fine, and detail is fair for a film of this vintage. But the lack
of a widescreen transfer is still frustrating as hell.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
The included English
Dolby 2.0 Surround here is okay, but nothing exciting. Dynamic range
is dated, so high- or low-end is dull and cramped. The 80's tunes are
balanced nicely with the dialogue, and we get some minor bleed to the
surrounds but it's hardly aggressive. It's likely that the film's
original theatrical sound mix was not particularly dynamic, so this is
probably a solid representation.
Also included are English
captions encoded as subtitles, as well as true English Closed
Captions.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
None
at all, not even trailers.
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you
get when you pop the disc in your PC?
No ROM extras have
been included.
Parting Thoughts
If Can't Buy Me
Love instantly brings back memories of the waning 80s, I'm sure you'll
get a kick out of this DVD. But it makes me quite cranky that there's
no widescreen version offered, must less any extras. But like many
other lackluster catalog DVDs slowly saturating the market, if you
absolutely have to have it, you may be able to find it cheap.
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