Say Anything...

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Say Anything...

Theatrical release poster
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Produced by Polly Platt
Written by Cameron Crowe
Starring John Cusack
Ione Skye
John Mahoney
Lili Taylor
Joan Cusack
Cinematography László Kovács
Editing by Richard Marks
Distributed by 20th Century Fox
Release date(s) April 14, 1989
Running time 100 minutes
Language English

Say Anything... is a romantic film written and directed by Cameron Crowe and released in 1989. It is Crowe's directorial debut. In 2002, Entertainment Weekly ranked Say Anything... as the greatest modern movie romance. This movie ranked number 11 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the fifty best high school movies.[1] It is among the 50 best reviewed film of all time according to Rotten Tomatoes.[2]

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

The movie, which is set in Seattle, Washington, features John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler, a mediocre student and aspiring kickboxer who attempts a relationship with school valedictorian Diane Court (played by Ione Skye), despite the fact that some of his friends believe she is out of his league. Diane has just won a major scholarship to study in England and will be going there at the end of the summer. Her father Jim, played by John Mahoney, is under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for alleged tax violations committed at his nursing home, and Diane worries she should be spending more time with her father rather than Lloyd. Also, Jim does not approve of his daughter dating an underachiever like Lloyd, and pressures her to break up with him. Lloyd ultimately wins her heart before the summer's end and helps support Diane through her dad's conviction. The film ends with Lloyd escorting nervous-flyer Diane to England.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Soundtrack

Allmusic said the soundtrack, like the film, is "much smarter than the standard teen fare of the era."[3] The soundtrack included 11 songs:

[edit] Reception

Roger Ebert called it "one of the best films of the year — a film that is really about something, that cares deeply about the issues it contains — and yet it also works wonderfully as a funny, warmhearted romantic comedy."[4] Caryn James of The New York Times said the film "resembles a first-rate production of a children's story. Its sense of parents and the summer after high school is myopic, presented totally from the teen-agers' point of view. Yet its melodrama - Will Dad go to prison? Will Diane go to England? - distorts that perspective, so the film doesn't have much to offer an actual adult, not even a sense of what it's truly like to be just out of high school these days. The film is all charming performances and grace notes, but there are plenty of worse things to be."[5] Variety called it a "half-baked love story, full of good intentions but uneven in the telling."[6]

[edit] References


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