The thing that drew me to Say Anything(1989) was the writer and director: Cameron Crowe. He directed and wrote such movies as Jerry McGuire and Elizabethtown. His movies are mainly romance, but they also have some sort of side plot.
The movie starts out after the graduation of Seattle High School with Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) asking out the anti-social valedictorian, Diane Court (Ione Skye) and she grudgingly accepts. The party that they go to is the first experience that Diane has with meeting other people because during school, she was 100% focused on her schoolwork and her grades. During the night, it is obvious that Diane is becoming more comfortable and more attracted to Lloyd because he adores her and wants to make sure she’s safe and having fun.
Next the movie begins to show a little bit of Diane’s home life. Her parents are divorced and she decided to live with her father because she believed it was safer. Her father is very over-protective and over the years, has pushed her to be a straight A student. Her father owns a nursing home, which is very important later in the plot. It is revealed early on to the watchers that Diane won a full ride to a school in England and she only has 16 weeks left at home. In the beginning, when Diane and her father are talking, Ione’s acting is extremely awkward. It was very forced and not believable at all, but as the movie progressed, her acting gradually got better.
Diane agrees to go on a second date with Lloyd, but the ‘date’ is having dinner with her father and two of his colleagues. That evening, two IRS agents come to the house to announce that Diane’s father is under investigation because of his spending habits. Right before this, he mentioned that the jukebox in the living room was $9000 and he gave Diane a brand new car as a graduation present.
Diane buckles under the pressure of everything that is happening with her and her father and she breaks up with Lloyd. This idea was planted in her head by her father, who thought that Lloyd was a distraction and he wasn’t good enough for her. However, Diane finds the money that her father had been accused of stealing from his clients and goes back to Lloyd. He gets arrested right before Lloyd and Diane move to England.
It centers upon a main theme of adolescence and the problems that come along with being a teenage, about to go into college. The party was a big part of this because it showed people being pressure to drink, sexual pressure and other kinds of peer pressure. And then, of course, the pressure of trying to be perfect for your parent(s).
There were a few things that really caught my attention with this movie. One was that the boy in the relationship was the most heartbroken after the break-up. Traditionally in romantic stories, the girl ends up heartbroken and defeated, whether she did the breaking up or not.
My critique of this movie might be a bit blinded by my love for Cameron Crowe, but I didn’t find much to complain about, save for Ione’s acting towards the beginning. Overall, it is a really good movie that forces you to experience a majority of emotions during viewing.
The Lloyd Dobler boombox scene is a pretty famous scene in movie history, so I'm sure you've seen it before!
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