A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon 1988, Rated R

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Starring River Phoenix, Ann Magnuson, et al.

There have been a number of unfortunate times where, by some act of scheduling incompetency, I have placed myself in a car on the outbound Eisenhower at 5:30 PM on a Friday. There are approximately 3 million people living in Chicago proper and roughly 7 million more in the suburbs. Half of those people are on the Eisenhower driving home from downtown, reducing my average speed down to four miles an hour. The other half of Chicago is on the Edens headed north. Sitting in my car, the gear shift in park, with the hot summer sun beating down upon me, I glanced up at the peeling paint on the underside of the Cicero Avenue bridge and thought to myself, "nothing could possibly move slower than traffic on the Ike on a Friday afternoon." Then I screened A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon and realized that I was wrong.

Starring River Phoenix, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon is a look at the 48 hour time period before Reardon (Phoenix) is to start college, ultimately, peaking with one of the most boring nights of supposed debauchery ever captured on celluloid.

Set in Chicago during the '60's, Reardon has high hopes that he will be able to attend Northwestern University come fall. However, two days before classes are to begin, Reardon learns that his father will not pay for his schooling unless he attends his father's business college alma mater. With Reardon looking to do anything but what his father does for a living, he opts to go to Hawaii with his girlfriend, Denise (Ione Skye). After spending a day looking for cash to buy a plane ticket, Reardon dumps that idea and moves onto another plan that involves sleeping with numerous women who are not his girlfriend, including a good friend of his mother's. Reardon continues on this path for at least several hours before heading out on the town for his defining night as a teenager.

There were numerous faults with this film, but the fact that the movie and director William Richert (who adapted the screenplay from his novel of the same name) took themselves entirely too seriously was just the most cloying facet.

Reminiscent in tone to John Hughes' 1986 melodrama The Breakfast Club, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon makes the mistake of placing one malcontent teenager's problems at the forefront of its plot. In the true fashion of celluloid teens, Reardon is unhappy with himself, constantly brooding about one thing or another, angry at his parents, his girlfriend, society in general, people who have jobs and Trent Reznor for not having written any pissed-off-at-the-world music during the '60's. And, in the true fashion of audiences watching celluloid teens, nobody gives a damn about Jimmy Reardon and his huge, earth-shattering problems, because we know that in a mere four years, Reardon himself will look back at his pompous high school pontifications and spazz attacks and laugh at his behavior.

While watching A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon it seemed fairly obvious that Richert was interested in creating another teen classic like The Breakfast Club. So, in an attempt to reach this goal, Richert wrote certain scenes and dialogue with such an inflated grandiosity that no one could possibly miss the ever-so-important message that was being sent. This served only to alienate me though, turning the on-screen events into overdone and overacted scenes that just didn't make much sense--Reardon drinking and throwing stones at passing El trains carrying the "worker bees" on their way to work for The Man. Was I supposed to believe that Reardon is so opposed to the status quo and the nature of life that he actually would pitch rocks at public transportation vehicles? And if I was to believe that Reardon wanted to be someone truly different in the worst way, was I just supposed to ignore the fact that Reardon himself was the epitome of a stereotypical loner--he is interested in writing poetry, drinking pot loads of coffee and hanging out in counter-culture establishments--that he himself could have been labeled a beatnik or hippie?

Creating memorable teen films is something of an enigma: teenagers take themselves way to seriously--getting a low grade on one exam causes most teens to wonder if they will be able to get into college--but putting this realistic sense of self-grandiosity on-screen can turn off audiences. Most of the more memorable teen films just avoid this pitfall by Porkys-izing their characters; vacuous teens want sex, beer and more sex. And within these confines, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon is a major disappointment. The saddest part is that even within the confines of the dramatic genre, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon still isn't anything worth viewing.