Valley Girl

Directed by Martha Coolidge, Valley Girl details the relationship that eventually forms between Deborah Foreman’s popular title character, Julie, and an oddball, wrong-side-of-the-tracks rebel named Randy (Nicolas Cage). It’s an appealing premise that’s employed to passable yet mostly underwhelming effect by Coolidge, as the filmmaker, working from a script by Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane, delivers a sluggish, meandering comedy that holds the viewer at arm’s length for the duration of its protracted running time – with the picture suffering from a lack of momentum that’s compounded by Coolidge’s somewhat low-rent approach to the material. There’s little doubt, then, that Valley Girl‘s extremely mild success is due almost entirely to the personable nature of its various performers, as Coolidge admittedly elicits strong work from her stars and myriad of periphery players. (It doesn’t hurt, certainly, that there exists a palpable feeling of romantic chemistry between Cage and Foreman.) The agreeable soundtrack and compelling use of real-life Los Angeles locations heightens the movie’s generally watchable atmosphere, ultimately, which does, in the final analysis, cement Valley Girl‘s place as an often aggressively hit-and-miss endeavor that feels like it could (and should) have been so much better.

**1/2 out of ****