"Just One of the Guys" is a teen-culture comedy directed by Lisa Gottlieb. Compared to certain genre fare from the decade, "Just One of the Guys" manages to transcend the mostly pedestrian fare that proliferated in the Reagan years. It's in the same absurdist, farcical vein as Better Off Dead and Private Resort. Credited writers Dennis Feldman and Jeff Franklin, in concert with director Gottlieb, create a world that oozes 1980s excess while obliquely paying homage to William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Still, the plot's proto-feminist message is subsumed by the cross-gender hijinks. Just One of the Guys got initially overlooked at the box office compared to the John Hughes high school explorations (16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club) but managed to generate a cult following for Generation X viewers in the early years of cable and home video.
The plot centers Terri Griffith (Joyce Hyser), a high school senior who dreams of being a journalist. The major newspaper in town is offering a summer internship for a local student-but first, a student essay has to be a top finalist as chosen by the schools' English teachers. Unfortunately, Terri's feedback from teacher Mr. Raymaker combines constructive criticism with a dose of condescension. Additionally, Terri is exasperated in dealing with her virginal sex-obsessed younger brother Buddy (Billy Jacoby, a future alumnus of "Parker Lewis Can't Lose") and her entitlement-driven college-student boyfriend, frat-boy Kevin (Leigh McCloskey). Convinced that her essay was rejected purely due to sexism, Terri imagines an extreme tactic to get her essay (about the nutritional values of the school's lunchtime offerings) reconsidered: she decides to secretly enroll at a rival school and pass herself off as a boy.
While there, Terri (newly self-identified as "Terry"-of course) still gets disappointing feedback for her essay-but then she hits on the notion to write about her experiences as a temporary guy and how boys and girls act around her. Among other things, 'Terry' quickly makes an enemy of Greg, the school bully (William Zabka, in a follow-up bully role right after The Karate Kid). Terry also makes friends with the outsider boys at the school, some of whom pass their time speaking fake alien-talk to one another or showing off their pet reptiles. But there's one in particular, Rick (Clayton Rohner), who catches Terry's eye- first as a friend, then as more than a friend. Terry encourages Rick to become more confident in his interactions with the opposite sex and promises to help him get a date for his school's senior prom.
From there, a series of mostly amusing misadventures take place, with Terri juggling her life as Terry at school during the day and in the evening trying to deal with Buddy and Kevin-while wrestling with her growing feelings for Rick. Additionally, a girl classmate starts falling for "Terry", that throws further complication into the mix. (A sequence staged at a campsite is the highlight of this subplot). All of this leads to a climax at Rick's school's beachside senior prom, where everything comes apart.
When analyzing this film, several components to the plot and character development stand out: The filmmakers have created a bubble of ostentatious wealth and social privilege that low-key informs many of the proceedings. Several of these high-school aged characters drive then-contemporary desirable cars. Buddy's Playboy magazine collection (the company is thanked in the credits) is likely of his own acquisition and not his father's secret stash. Several sequences involve one or more of the kids acquiring beer or offering it to one another. (In what may be simply a quirk of the production, the shown beer cans are super-generic). Any adults in the story are exclusively limited to school personnel and are the resident foils for Terri and others. Seemingly, nobody's parents are around for the entirety of the story. For context, Buddy has a series of foul-mouthed exchanges with his and Terry's mother, who is stated to be on a Caribbean vacation with their dad. Above all else, the logistics of Terri's hoax is handled rather matter-of-factly. Of course, this was the 1980s, when it was arguably both harder to forge transfer papers and harder to scrutinize them for veracity.
There are some puzzling creative choices made during the narrative.
For one, several actors present as much older than the story claims. Joyce Hyser was 26 while filming this, and she has dewy enough looks to get away with being a high school senior-but several male actors in the film come across as more 25 - 30 rather than 18. Perhaps it was considered a pragmatic compromise for the production, as the screen actor's guild rules for underaged performers come with a lot of restrictions, but the optics are still glaring, especially for the locker room scenes.
Despite Terri's alleged passion for writing, viewers actually don't see her doing much of it. There's no recurring scene with her at a typewriter or with a pen and paper writing out her thoughts with a voiceover, for example. It's just taken for granted that she's still technically going through all of this to write an in-depth essay. Viewers also get to see a poster of Ernest Hemingway on her wall. An author who has more than his share of criticism regarding allegations of sexism and less-than-fully realized women characters, curiously.
Rick, Terri's budding love interest, is presented as a sensitive, musically-inclined loner- he is shown to be a James Brown obsessionist who collects memorabilia and records from the R&B legend who had by then segued into the nostalgia circuit. But in Terri's conversation with him, he balks at actually showing his musical inclinations, including during the climax where a live band is playing. If viewers were supposed to accept that Rick is this really talented guy (he hedges about college being in his future), it's not really shown.
The other nerdy kids come across as only eccentrics with no underlying depth. Even Napoleon Dynamite might tell these kids to get lost.
The epilogue seemed like it was shoehorned in to fit the run time of the movie. It would have There's a key moment in the climax where Terri reveals her feelings-and more-to Rick. In particular, there's a segment that lasts maybe two seconds in real-time but in the Internet era has been paused, turned into a .gif and uploaded to any number of message boards as discussion fodder and even has an entry such wildly carnal websites as Boobopedia (where the content catalogues-I think you get the idea). The sequence contributed to the legend of the film and apparently was a coming-of-age (or at least, coming of puberty) touchstone for any number of younger male viewers in the 1980s era of HBO repeating a modest backlog of films with sustained frequency. But to call this movie a "sex comedy" would really be a grave mistake. Despite Terri's brief exposure-which is not done for seduction-it and Buddy's centerfolds (his bedroom has them posted all over) is the only genuinely 'racy' content.
That said, this is a film that I could not have seen with my parents, as relatively tame as it is. I wasn't allowed to see rated R films and even PG-13 films like this weren't guaranteed. I also didn't have access to cable TV or a VCR in my primary school years. I'm thinking, pragmatically, I could only have seen this with a peer-aged cousin or an older sibling.
In retrospect, the film juggles a number of teen-centered social issues that still have some currency today. The gender-influenced career role expectations for girls and boys is still an issue. Terri's cross-dressing conceit could be said to obliquely touch on some of the concerns of non-gender conforming and nonbinary folks. Though in this case, Terri's heterosexual feelings are never in question. Even her brother Buddy's desire for sex gets fulfilled by Sandy, who had a crush on "guy Terry" (Sandy's presumed age difference with the younger Buddy is never addressed. Again, a possible "blame it on the 80s" conceit).
Just One of the Guys is worth seeing as a more quality-driven teen comedy of the era compared to the bawdy-for-it's-own-sake Porky's franchise and any number of one-offs like Class, Zapped! And more.
The plot centers Terri Griffith (Joyce Hyser), a high school senior who dreams of being a journalist. The major newspaper in town is offering a summer internship for a local student-but first, a student essay has to be a top finalist as chosen by the schools' English teachers. Unfortunately, Terri's feedback from teacher Mr. Raymaker combines constructive criticism with a dose of condescension. Additionally, Terri is exasperated in dealing with her virginal sex-obsessed younger brother Buddy (Billy Jacoby, a future alumnus of "Parker Lewis Can't Lose") and her entitlement-driven college-student boyfriend, frat-boy Kevin (Leigh McCloskey). Convinced that her essay was rejected purely due to sexism, Terri imagines an extreme tactic to get her essay (about the nutritional values of the school's lunchtime offerings) reconsidered: she decides to secretly enroll at a rival school and pass herself off as a boy.
While there, Terri (newly self-identified as "Terry"-of course) still gets disappointing feedback for her essay-but then she hits on the notion to write about her experiences as a temporary guy and how boys and girls act around her. Among other things, 'Terry' quickly makes an enemy of Greg, the school bully (William Zabka, in a follow-up bully role right after The Karate Kid). Terry also makes friends with the outsider boys at the school, some of whom pass their time speaking fake alien-talk to one another or showing off their pet reptiles. But there's one in particular, Rick (Clayton Rohner), who catches Terry's eye- first as a friend, then as more than a friend. Terry encourages Rick to become more confident in his interactions with the opposite sex and promises to help him get a date for his school's senior prom.
From there, a series of mostly amusing misadventures take place, with Terri juggling her life as Terry at school during the day and in the evening trying to deal with Buddy and Kevin-while wrestling with her growing feelings for Rick. Additionally, a girl classmate starts falling for "Terry", that throws further complication into the mix. (A sequence staged at a campsite is the highlight of this subplot). All of this leads to a climax at Rick's school's beachside senior prom, where everything comes apart.
When analyzing this film, several components to the plot and character development stand out: The filmmakers have created a bubble of ostentatious wealth and social privilege that low-key informs many of the proceedings. Several of these high-school aged characters drive then-contemporary desirable cars. Buddy's Playboy magazine collection (the company is thanked in the credits) is likely of his own acquisition and not his father's secret stash. Several sequences involve one or more of the kids acquiring beer or offering it to one another. (In what may be simply a quirk of the production, the shown beer cans are super-generic). Any adults in the story are exclusively limited to school personnel and are the resident foils for Terri and others. Seemingly, nobody's parents are around for the entirety of the story. For context, Buddy has a series of foul-mouthed exchanges with his and Terry's mother, who is stated to be on a Caribbean vacation with their dad. Above all else, the logistics of Terri's hoax is handled rather matter-of-factly. Of course, this was the 1980s, when it was arguably both harder to forge transfer papers and harder to scrutinize them for veracity.
There are some puzzling creative choices made during the narrative.
For one, several actors present as much older than the story claims. Joyce Hyser was 26 while filming this, and she has dewy enough looks to get away with being a high school senior-but several male actors in the film come across as more 25 - 30 rather than 18. Perhaps it was considered a pragmatic compromise for the production, as the screen actor's guild rules for underaged performers come with a lot of restrictions, but the optics are still glaring, especially for the locker room scenes.
Despite Terri's alleged passion for writing, viewers actually don't see her doing much of it. There's no recurring scene with her at a typewriter or with a pen and paper writing out her thoughts with a voiceover, for example. It's just taken for granted that she's still technically going through all of this to write an in-depth essay. Viewers also get to see a poster of Ernest Hemingway on her wall. An author who has more than his share of criticism regarding allegations of sexism and less-than-fully realized women characters, curiously.
Rick, Terri's budding love interest, is presented as a sensitive, musically-inclined loner- he is shown to be a James Brown obsessionist who collects memorabilia and records from the R&B legend who had by then segued into the nostalgia circuit. But in Terri's conversation with him, he balks at actually showing his musical inclinations, including during the climax where a live band is playing. If viewers were supposed to accept that Rick is this really talented guy (he hedges about college being in his future), it's not really shown.
The other nerdy kids come across as only eccentrics with no underlying depth. Even Napoleon Dynamite might tell these kids to get lost.
The epilogue seemed like it was shoehorned in to fit the run time of the movie. It would have There's a key moment in the climax where Terri reveals her feelings-and more-to Rick. In particular, there's a segment that lasts maybe two seconds in real-time but in the Internet era has been paused, turned into a .gif and uploaded to any number of message boards as discussion fodder and even has an entry such wildly carnal websites as Boobopedia (where the content catalogues-I think you get the idea). The sequence contributed to the legend of the film and apparently was a coming-of-age (or at least, coming of puberty) touchstone for any number of younger male viewers in the 1980s era of HBO repeating a modest backlog of films with sustained frequency. But to call this movie a "sex comedy" would really be a grave mistake. Despite Terri's brief exposure-which is not done for seduction-it and Buddy's centerfolds (his bedroom has them posted all over) is the only genuinely 'racy' content.
That said, this is a film that I could not have seen with my parents, as relatively tame as it is. I wasn't allowed to see rated R films and even PG-13 films like this weren't guaranteed. I also didn't have access to cable TV or a VCR in my primary school years. I'm thinking, pragmatically, I could only have seen this with a peer-aged cousin or an older sibling.
In retrospect, the film juggles a number of teen-centered social issues that still have some currency today. The gender-influenced career role expectations for girls and boys is still an issue. Terri's cross-dressing conceit could be said to obliquely touch on some of the concerns of non-gender conforming and nonbinary folks. Though in this case, Terri's heterosexual feelings are never in question. Even her brother Buddy's desire for sex gets fulfilled by Sandy, who had a crush on "guy Terry" (Sandy's presumed age difference with the younger Buddy is never addressed. Again, a possible "blame it on the 80s" conceit).
Just One of the Guys is worth seeing as a more quality-driven teen comedy of the era compared to the bawdy-for-it's-own-sake Porky's franchise and any number of one-offs like Class, Zapped! And more.