GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN (1985)
By Shannon Roberts, 04-11-09
So there’s this girl. She loves to dance. There’s a television show featuring the hottest dancers that she loves to watch. Lo and behold the show announces a contest to find a new couple. Our heroine, with the help of her wacky friend and against the will of her parents, sets out to win that dance contest. Of course, there’s a rich girl who’s trying to rig the contest and eliminate the competition because, of course, she wants the hot guy.
Sound familiar?
Don’t get too excited. This is not the plot of the movie Hairspray. Well, actually it is. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This is, in point of fact, the plot to a little movie called Girls Just Want to Have Fun, starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Shannen Doherty, and a very young Jonathan Silverman.
I had never seen this particular gem, but I remember girls talking about it when I was a younger, chubbier version of my current self. I knew I was in for a treat when I popped in the DVD and was offered the choice of widescreen or full screen. In the still image for the widescreen option we see Sarah Jessica Parker throwing jazz hands, flanked on either side by two large black women in full African dance regalia - but - and here’s where it gets fun - in the full screen still, the black ladies are notably absent. Could this be an accident? Oh, I think not.
At the start of our story, Janey (Parker), the shy daughter of an Army colonel, has just transferred to a new (Catholic) school. On the bus ride home she meets Lynne (Hunt), a rebellious girl with an excess of both personality and Aqua-Net who immediately makes a joke about Tab cola. Together they set about to get Janey to Chicago to win that dance contest.
Meanwhile, across town, Jeff (Lee Montgomery), the hunky son of a machinist, is also hatching a plan to win a chance to be a regular on Dance Television with the help of his enterprising friend Drew (Silverman).
Despite being formulaic and predictable, there are some good groaner jokes (“Anyone could confuse Hail Mary and Proud Mary”; about a motorcycle: “Is it safe?” “It’s the safest thing you’ll ever have between your legs.”) There’s a bar fight tactic that I may have to employ someday (flip a coin, while it’s in the air punch your opponent in the face). There’s some fantastically embarrassing dancing.
Do they win the contest? Do they get together? Does the rich bitch get what’s coming to her? I won’t ruin the fun, which the movie is not altogether lacking. If you miss bad dance music and stretch pants as much as I often do, if you get nostalgic for eighties punk rockers with multi-colored Mohawks, and if you, like me, get a special thrill from an underage Jonathan Silverman, then this film certainly delivers.
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