My Favorite Movies: #18—...say anything

18. …say anything (1989) 

Genre: Romantic Comedy 

Director: Cameron Crowe 

Writer: Cameron Crowe 

Stars: John Cusack, Ione Skye, John Mahoney, Lili Taylor

Awards: no major awards or nominations 

Metacritic score: 85 

IMDB Ranking: n/a

Entertainment Weekly chose this movie as it's #1 romance movie of the past 25 years, and rightly so. This film, more than any other I've seen, captures the reality of teenage love in a way that's both honest and unexpected. It takes all the tropes of a romantic movie—meet cute, first date, slow burn, passion, breakup, reconciliation—and puts them through a prism of two unlikely lovers whose differences make them perfect for each other. 

John Cusack plays Lloyd Dobler, an underachiever whose stated goal in life is to be Diane Court's boyfriend ("I'm good at it," he confesses to her father), whose aimless lack of direction is found in his love for Diane (Ione Skye), a perfectionist overachiever who wins a scholarship to England after their high school graduation.

He calls her out of the blue—she has to look him up in her yearbook after accepting his invitation to the epic annual graduation party—and as they get to know each other, we see a friendship forming first, characterized by his willingness to do things he's not comfortable with, such as showing the movie Cocoon to the resident's of the nursing home her father runs, in order to spend time with her.

Writer-director Cameron Crowe gets so much right about what it was like to be a teenager in the late 1980s. The graduation party scene is one of the few depictions of a high school kegger than feels right—the shouting, the fights, the makeout, and the drama...oh, so much drama. Lloyd is a sweet soul who lives with his older sister (real-life sister Joan Cusack) and whose best friend is Corey (Lili Taylor), a singer-songwriter who wrote 64 songs about her breakup with her boyfriend, Joe.

Lloyd's female influences are balanced out by a quartet of doofus bro-dudes who give him completely useless advice after Diane suddenly and unexpectedly breaks off their relationship. The pain in Cusack's eyes as he depicts this loss conveys a wealth of emotions about the longing of young love. This leads, of course, to the inevitable (and best-known) scene of Lloyd standing outside Diane's window holding a boom box (remember those?) over his head playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes," the song on his car radio the first time Lloyd and Diane have sex.

Her reticence to give herself completely to his love stems from her complicated relationship with her father, played by the amazing John Mahoney. He seems like a stand-up guy whose only desire as a single father is to do what's best for Diane, but he keeps a devastating secret from her that seriously damages their relationship and pushes her back toward Lloyd.

It's difficult to name my favorite line from the movie, because all of them are such a part of my total film experience, but I especially love when she returns to him at his kickboxing gym to tell him that she has left her father's home and wants him back. He looks at her and asks, "Are you here 'cause you need someone, or 'cause you need me?" Before she can answer, he says, "Forget it. I don't care," and then takes her in his arms. She replies, "I need you."

So many of the turns this movie takes are unexpected, which is part of what makes the film so wonderful. I won't give away the ending for those who haven't seen it (and you must see it), but as the movie draws to a close, Diane tells Lloyd, "Nobody thought that we would do this. Nobody thinks it's going to work." He nods at her and says, "You've just described every great success story."

Ding.