Mischief

Ohio, 1956. Jonathan is in his last year of school, shy, and has been looking at Marilyn, the prettiest girl in it, for years; he has never spoken to her. Someone new moves to town. Gene arrives on a motorcycle, is wary of nobody, and gets on badly with his father. The two become friends. Gene tells him what to do: how to stand, what to say, when to be quiet. Jonathan starts to try. Gene's own story is more tangled, and the town's bearing toward him is clear. Mel Damski directs. Doug McKeon plays Jonathan, Chris Nash plays Gene and Kelly Preston plays Marilyn; Catherine Mary Stewart and Jami Gertz are also in the cast. It is one of the youth films made in the eighties but set in the fifties; that wave of nostalgia was common in American cinema at the time. Music of the period is used heavily and largely sets the rhythm of the narrative. The pairing it builds is familiar: the timid one and the bold one, and what each learns from the other. What is most arguable about it now is the register of some scenes; the approach to the female characters carries the shapes of its time. The picture of the town is worked in detail: cars, the cinema, the petrol station and the school dance. Who it is for: viewers who like eighties youth comedy and fifties nostalgia. Who it is not for: the shape is familiar, some scenes are uncomfortable now, and the narrative stays on the surface.