One of my favorite movies! Charming, sweet, and funny - any time I'm in a bad mood, this will fix it.

Valley Girl is Romeo & Juliet for the 80s. Romeo... er, Randy is a punk (or at least as punk as you could be in 1983 in a mainstream movie) from Hollywood, Julie's a Val. The basic plot is as basic as it can get: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. The plot's been played over & over again, but what makes this one an L.A. treasure is that anyone who's familiar with both sides of the hill can relate, particularly the Hollywood crowd, for whom a trip to the Valley is a trip into hell.

Deborah Foreman's adorable as the val-gal swept off her feet by bad boy Cage and his puppy-dog eyes. Her group of friends naturally don't like her new guy, who "fer sure doesn't dress like them". But he wins her back through dedication and stalking, and in the end, the boyfriend gets beaten up, and Randy and Julie drive off into the sunset... or at least to the closest hotel.

With appearances by Josie Cotton (at the prom) and the Plimsouls (at the Central, with cameos by Zatar and Tequila M), this is no paean to the punk culture (you need Repo Man for that), but the soundtrack does hold charm for those that were there, and only improves on listening.

As a side note - did you know that val-speak was actually an issue in the late 70s and early 80s? It came to national light when Moon Unit Zappa, doing a pitch-perfect val to her dad Frank's score, hit the charts in 1982. In fact, at my high school, parents of some of the students actually hired cult deprogrammers to rid their teen girls of the habit.

It's a real shame that Deborah Foreman recently took down her message board. There was something great about chatting with the Val herself.

And an update - the DVD will be available on August 5, 2003! You can preorder your copy now from Amazon. In the meantime, you can still pick up a VHS release to tide you over till that day when we get our widescreen, surround sound, special features version.

"That chick Julie, she's truly dazzling."
"Yep, but she's not one of ours."

reviewed by Karen