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Totally Awesome directed by Neal Brennan
Totally Awesome is a send up of every cheesy '80s teen movie you can think of, although it mainly spoofs The Karate Kid, Footloose and Some Kind of Wonderful, with a little bit of Teen Wolf
Lori's older brother Charile (who is ranked last out of all the senior boys) soon makes friends with the last ranking girl, Billie, who has greasy skin, is poor and makes her own clothes. Charlie immediately becomes infatuated with Kimberly, the most popular girl in school, and an instant rivalry forms between him and Kimberly's athlete boyfriend, Kipp. I thought Kipp was one of the funniest characters in the movie. He's an amalgam of the blond, popular bully from every '80s movie, many of which were played to headband-wearing-perfection by none other than William Zabka. The movie progresses along to the usual '80s formula -- uh, sort of -- as dancing and statutory rape are legalized. Charlie wins the track meet (thanks to his un-ambiguously gay, Asian landscaper/decathalon coach and a most fortuitous solar eclipse) and he ends up with the astringently-challenged weird girl. And in the end, Kipp realizes what all us cool kids knew about the popular bullies back then, "I'm Kipp and my life goes down hill starting today!" You said it, Kipp! |
I graduated high school in 1990, so I have first hand knowledge of '80s teen angst. I lived through it personally and I've also experienced it through the magic of movies. I saw nearly every teen movie in the theater or soon after on HBO, my favorites being the Molly Ringwald trifecta: 
, 
and 
. With her milky complexion, freckles and red hair, Molly embodied teengirldom in the 1980s, whether she was playing the misunderstood everygirl, the rich bitch or the kooky little poor girl with a heart of gold. Of course there were many other important '80s teen movies of note, such 
, 
, 
, 
, and, last but not least, 
. There was another teen movie made in the '80s that you might not have heard of. It was shelved due to lack of funds and remained in a vault in Arizona until now, or at least that's what Ben Stein (Bueller? Bueller?) informs us in the introduction of its DVD release. That movie is 
tossed in for good measure. The plot is very familiar to anyone who has seen those oldies-but-goodies: A family moves to a new town and the older siblings start a brand new year at a brand new high school.
Lori's life is dance. She's crazy about it and she's not afraid to bop down the hall wearing her day-glo, off-the-shoulder Flashdance top while grooving to her Walkman. But she soon finds out dancing has been outlawed from her new town! Oh the horror! She is desolated until she meets Gabriel, the 35 year old former dance instructor turned high school janitor who takes her under his wing (which is a nice way to say he's a creepy old dude who lures teen girls to his secret outlaw dance studio for some after-school fun.)
Kipp's over-the-top cackle and lame-o one-liners kept me giggling. But the best parts of the movie were Chris Kattan as the creepy dance instruction/janitor and Tracy Morgan who plays a black break dancer with a bad Jheri curl who gives Charlie lessons on coolness. He turns Charlie into 
(a movie that owes its existance, according to Ben Stein, to lots and lots of cocaine) and it's astonishing how much he looks like C. Thomas Howell! Everything that comes out of Tracy Morgan's mouth is funny. I wish the entire movie was about him. Thankfully there are seven minutes of Tracy Morgan ad libs in the bonus section.