There’s been some­thing on my mind lately and it now feels like a good time to finally reveal that to you, with­out feel­ing com­pletely embarassed. There’s noth­ing quite like a nag­ging thought, jump­ing up and down in your mind like that ener­getic class­mate who real­ized the answer just before you did, remem­ber that kid? Fran­ti­cally wav­ing his hand, while try­ing to main­tain a sense of men­tal sta­bil­ity, yeah, that’s how I feel right now so let me just spill it.

We need another 80’s movie.

I know, you’re prob­a­bly think­ing to your­self right now that I’ve com­pletely lost it. After sev­eral weeks of silence, my mind has come to a screech­ing halt and I’ve crashed landed in Crazy-go-nutsville, Pop­u­la­tion: Me.

It’s pos­si­ble that I might’ve agreed with you prior to my writ­ing this, but at the moment I’ve con­vinced myself that this might save Hol­ly­wood from the mediocre scripts that are some­how green­lighted before some­one real­izes that Wil Fer­rel and Ash­ton Kutcher have not only jumped the shark but they are now flee­ing said shark in a fran­tic craze.

Let me break this down into a few thoughts wherein I hope to redeem my reveal­ing this absolutely insane suggestion.

Fea­tures of a Typ­i­cal 80’s Movie

Think back to films like ‘Six­teen Can­dles’, ‘The Goonies’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘E.T.’, ‘Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off’ and flops like ‘Wil­low’, ‘Howard the Duck’ and those Ewok movies. What did these all have in com­mon, despite awful hair styles, awk­ward act­ing and pseudo-electronic music?

All of the films men­tioned above ulti­mately have that “feel good”, slow-clapping emo­tion that’s hard to repli­cate in mod­ern films of the early-to-mid 90’s and now the 2000’s. I’m sure you’ve seen some extra­or­di­nary films in your life­time which com­pletely changed your per­spec­tive and out­look about the enter­tain­ment indus­try, but why is it that even today we can’t help but quote 80’s films in every­day conversation?

Lost Sin­cer­ity

Do we need to thank the writ­ers of 80’s movies for breath­ing life, albeit sappy life, into the films which we remem­ber? Or, is there some­thing else at work here?

I’ve often thought about the impact 80’s films have had on my life and why I’m con­stantly reflect­ing to an era that many peo­ple are glad is over, but there was a sin­cer­ity that’s miss­ing in recent films and we need that back in order to close the book on a chap­ter of film that never felt resolved.

End of an Era

To me it just kind of abruptly ended with movies like ‘Bat­ter­ies Not Included’, ‘Who Framed Roger Rab­bit’ and ‘UHF’ and to this day I half-expected some­one like Billy Barty or Weird Al to hit a enor­mous golden gong dur­ing a live telethon to mark the end of 80’s enter­tain­ment (Farewell to the 80’s: Celebs on Call) and announce to the world that the cur­tain would be lifted and the spot­light would be shone on films of the new era; the 1990’s.

There was never such an occas­sion. Never a slow clap that would grad­u­ally increase into a full applause with a freeze-framed end­ing cou­pled with the awk­ward laugh that would tran­si­tion to a quick thumbs up from the jock or beauty queen who learned to accept those who were different.

Never once did I hear the likes of Depeche Mode, ZZTop, Ste­vie Ray Vaughan or Oingo Boingo fad­ing slowly away in the back­ground as the lights dimmed and the cur­tains fell mark­ing the end of an era.

Instead, we were lin­ing up for Dances with Wolves and yet another Pauly Shore movie, look­ing for­ward with the movie-going blind­sights on and for­get­ting why 80’s movies were so endear­ing, sen­si­tive, funny, sappy and sin­cere in that “feel good”, slow-clapping kind of way.

We need another 80’s movie.