There are some movies that you see once in the theaters and forget. There are other movies that you see once in the theaters, forget, and watch once more when it comes to cable. And then you forget it again. There’s a third class of movies that you saw multiple times in theaters, bought the DVDs, and yet you STILL watch them when they show up on cable – this latter class includes the Lord of the Rings movies, the Harry Potter movies, and so on. One other type of movie seen in first run is the kind where you can’t quite bring yourself to buy the DVD, or it’s never come out in DVD format, but you’ll watch it every single time it shows up on TiVo. Such movies as “The Fifth Element” fall into this category (which is where I got the “moolti-pass” joke.)
And then there are some movies that you never saw in first run, but when they show up in the cable rotation, you watched out of idle curiousity. Suddenly, you’re hooked, and you will happily watch them over and over again, because for some mysterious reason, you absolutely love them and can’t think why you didn’t see them in the theater.
Such a movie is “Can’t Hardly Wait,” a movie made in 1998. In some ways, it’s the “American Graffiti” of its generation, but with better dialogue (remember who wrote AG? I rest my case).
The characters are pretty stock, but the cast is good.
Also, the background action is sometimes pretty funny, but there’s no explanation. Why does that weedy little teen keep showing up and stealing stuff right from under everyone’s noses? At one point, he boosts a patrol car. No one notices this.
Preston? Pre-STONE! I can watch this movie over, and over, and over. Why? I’m always spotting something I didn’t notice before, like the fact that the actor playing the hippy guy that licks a brownie off of Denise’s face is an alum of “Six Feet Under,” as is the actress that plays Denise. There are 3 pretty well-known actors in the “uncredited” section – Jenna Elfman, Melissa Joan Hart, and Jerry O’Connell, not to mention several more like Liv Tyler who did voiceovers.
Like I say, it’s like American Graffiti, but much more contemporary, since it contains a fairly decent re-creation of the lightsaber duel between Luke and Darth Vader, with flashlights.