Risky Business

Starring in the role that made him a household name, Tom Cruise leads this classic 80s film that ended up being a lot darker and profound than I expected. This isn't your typical teen sex comedy from the 80s. There's a lot of pointed commentary on capitalism, teen fantasy, and coming of age. Rebecca De Mornay is perfectly cast as the alluring, enigmatic call girl Cruise becomes entwined with and is instantly memorable in the role. Risky Business has a lot more to say than you might think and is worth checking out some 40 years later.

Risky Business and All The Right Moves are the two films that launched Tom Cruise's career as brat pack film star. Unlike so many of his contemporaries from the Eighties, he's proved to have staying power and will no doubt continue to do so.

All The Right Moves established Cruise as a dramatic actor, but Risky Business is a fun comedy about a hormone driven teenager who when the folks go away from his Chicago suburban home and he's left to play, he gets himself in all kinds of problems. First dialing up call girl, Rebecca DeMornay and then not having enough coin of the realm to pay her. Then getting mom's treasured glass egg stolen. And then getting the family car driven into Lake Michigan.

But Cruise and DeMornay, who is having trouble with her pimp Joe Pantoliano, hit on the brilliant idea that there's a market out there for his group of eager overachievers. And Tom's house becomes quite the swinging brothel.

Risky Business turns out to be pretty funny business. Best scene in the film involves Tom with Princeton interviewer Richard Mazur. You've got to love the way this boy gets into the Ivy League. Second best scene involves Tom and the family car as it plunges into the lake and then gets hoisted out.

Tom's definitely proved to have staying power in show business. I can see his character in Risky Business growing up to be Jerry Maguire.

Most funny comedies aren't very smart. They're funny because of individual jokes that play by themselves, without relying on the overall plot. Risky Business is an exception and the reason why it works so well, is because it tells a simple story that could really happen and would also be a lot of fun. Youre a high school kid, your parents go on vacation for a week, leaving you the whole house to yourself. That's the setup. A friend calls up a call girl, she shows up, and the entertainment begins. This movie is smart enough to know what kids think about at that age, sex, and it holds nothing back. It is very clever at times and has a strong character in Joel, played by a young, energetic Tom Cruise. Another thing that this movie understands is mood and tempo. Everything hits the right beat. Smart and funny is an ideal combination and this movie achieves it.

Great flick. Laughs all the way thru. Great one-liners, "Joel, get off the baby sitter" "Porsche, there is no substitute." "Looks like the University of Illinois!" "She's what all you young boys on the North Shore want" and the infamous, "Sometimes you just gotta say, 'What the F**k!' and don't forget Guido!

Rebecca De Mornay at 21 is fabulous as the savvy call girl for any teen boy to die for -- or for that matter any red blooded male of any age. She enters the film gliding silently into the back yard entrance of his parent's off-the-lake Chicago house, and after speaking only a few words, something like "are you ready for me Joel", artistically slips off her demure little slip of a dress, back arched to him, one leg kneeled in the window seat, presses her bottom into him, silently invites him to take her, and then turns, melts into him, kissing him in apparent yielding passion. This is immediately followed by cut scenes to multiple positions in multiple locations around the house. It's a perfect male fantasy of what paid for wild but romantic sex might be like (however unrealistic). It's also undoubtedly Joel's (Cruse's) first time. What an initiation.

The movie never gets that hot again (although the scene enacting Lana's "thing about trains" gets close). But it does become increasingly interesting as a first rate coming of age flick. Actually, it's a bit more than that. It explores the tension between the self disciplined deferred gratification he and has friends have all been taught they need for upper middle class success, versus the let loose sexual and other risk taking he knows is out there, some other people are doing, and wishes he could get away with. How far can a nice upper middle class boy go without throwing it all away? That risky business is what the film is all about.

Tom Cruz is perfect as the dutiful but less than gifted "future enterpriser" high school senior who's always had to work a little harder and stick more to the straight and narrow to try to live up to his parents' expectations -- without quite getting there. Although he was about the same age as De Mornay when they made the film, Cruz looks and acts a thoroughly convincing boyish 16 or 17. De Mornay's Lana is an iconic bad girl hooker of the naturally toney and perhaps feeling variety -- although about the last we're never entirely sure. She remains ultimately an enigma, beyond Cruz's and our full grasp, but not beyond his connecting with. Sadly, her first major role was probably her best -- although certainly not her only good one.

Cruz may be "on the right track", but it's De Mornay's Lana who knows everything about sex, life, taking risks, and living on the edge. She seduces Cruz into turning his parents' home into a bordello, to tap the money to be made by mingling his kind of friends with her kind of friends for a night, while she is hiding out from her "manager", and he has been left to "act responsibly" while his parents are away on a business trip. The scene where the Princeton alumnus interviewer, whom his dad has contacted to try to help finesse his "not quite Ivy League transcript", comes to the house to interview Cruz on the night the bordello party is in full swing, is deliciously funny and at the same time full of nervous tension. Cruz's character is on the brink of disaster, and then in fact clearly has thrown away a good part of his future opportunities -- or has he?

It's a delicious movie -- especially for males raised in seriously high academic achievement oriented families. Every good boy would love to call a Lana sometime -- and get away with it.