Lucas 1986

This is one of many movies I watched and recorded many, many years ago, probably off the fairly new HBO channel. I liked it enough at the time to not only keep the vhs tape, but also, when we transitioned to dvd, I used my DVD player/recorder to transfer it to a disk.

Of course the viewing quality is subpar, but when I saw it is on a streaming service I don’t subscribe to, I decided to watch my flawed copy. I didn’t quite like it as much as I did previously, but perhaps the intervening 30 years have something to do with that. It is still a pleasant watch. Corey Haim does a fine job portraying the brainy nerd who is advanced scholastically and attends with students a couple years old than he is. He is basically a Junior high (or middle school) student in high school.

Lucas spends much of the movie pretending. He assumes he has a chance with an attractive older girl who obviously just wants to be friends, he tells fibs about his living situation, and he unrealistically tries out for the football team.

I thought the movie could have done more with Winona Rider’s character. She has a few lines but she is interested in Lucas herself, and I suspect more of her was on the cutting room floor. The scenes of the actual football plays on the field were totally false. I know that science fiction, for example, doesn’t always use appropriate science to explain stuff that happens, but just a little consulting with someone who knows the game at all could have made the plays accurate without changing the result. Come on, refs!

There is a small twist at the end that is a nice touch, an appropriate ending for a movie aimed largely at teens.

— Peter McGinn