Risky Business

I guess you had to be there. Droves of critics and everymen alike cite this movie as one of the greatest '80s comedies, one of the greatest high school movies, and one of the best Tom Cruise showpieces of all time. But I didn't find the movie every funny, I wasn't reminded very much of high school when I watched it, and I thought young Tom Cruise was actually pretty terrible. I know I'm 28 years late to this party, but I just don't see what warrants all the praise. It probably doesn't help that I've already seen and enjoyed The Girl Next Door (2004), a film that admittedly borrows heavily from the plot of Risky Business; all I could think while watching this movie was, "this feels a lot like The Girl Next Door," even though I knew it came out some twenty years prior and hence had the "original" idea. But there's really not all that much about Risky Business that felt memorable or noteworthy in any way, aside from one scene ten minutes in where a pants-less Cruise parades around his living room playing air guitar to Bob Seger. Oh well. Not every movie I've ever bought was worth buying, even for three fifty.