Two seventeen-year-old chums, Sean Penn and Nicholas Cage, have about two months before they leave for Marine Corps boot camp in the early years of World War II. Their adventures vary. Penn falls in love with Elizabeth McGovern but is concerned that she might be too rich for him, which she isn't. (Her mother is merely a maid in a large Victorian mansion.) Cage is the more reckless of the two, a drinker who gets his girl pregnant and has to borrow the abortion money from Penn, who has to borrow it from McGovern, who has to borrow it from her wealthy friend. Penn and Cage leave a little wreckage behind but the departure for the Marines is about as close an approximation of happiness that they're liable to see for a while.
It's a puzzling movie, with echoes of autobiographical first stories. It looks like a movie about the author's youth and seems to be an attempt to convey to the audience the emotions that accompanied his early experiences. It resembles other youth movies about the war years. "Hope and Glory" and "Summer of 42" come to mind. Yet the screenwriter was only in his early thirties. Maybe it's something passed on to him by his Dad, in rough form. Maybe it was a gift of the muse.
Whatever it was the production design and location shooting are phenomenal. Makes you want to live in that picturesque and amiable little town of Point Muir, California, up in Mendocino County, even though the movie, supposedly shot around Christmas, must have been shot in the summer. (In the winter, every outdoor scene would have been rained out.) Wardrobe, set dressing, and make up are accurate to the period, and Dave Grusin's musical score is apt.
The script, though it has its drama and suspenseful comedy, is pretty leisurely. The war and the possibility of death hangs over everything like a translucent gray shroud but the events and conflicts we see are small in scale. That's as it should be.
The writer pulls a couple of literary stunts. Early on, there are allusions to Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Homer. I can believe that Penn's father, a grave digger by profession, can say something about "a rose by any other name," but I don't know where a gravedigger would come up with his name for his dog -- Argos. And when they spot McGovern entering the mansion, thinking that her family owns it, Cage remarks that "she's a Gatsby." And Penn understands at once. Okay, I had to read "The Great Gatsby" in high school too but I don't know about today's kids getting it. Last time I checked, the only student in my class who'd read it, got to do so in an advanced placement class in her high school. What a terrible comment on today's youth, he said, gnawing the handle of his cane, his spectacles sliding off into the guacamole, cursing fitfully while searching for his teeth.
Well, there's certainly one way in which the golden age of small-town youthful mores was an improvement over the more recent period in which I grew up -- that unplanned pregnancy by Cage's girl friend, and the oh-so-casual way in which, on only their second date, Penn and McGovern exchange bodily fluids. I can guarantee you that there was nothing like that going on in Hillside High School! No, siree, Bob. Man, it was lousy. But, all seriousness aside, I don't believe there was much of it going on in Point Muir in 1942 either. Another stunt by the writer, called modernizing the mores.
The movie exudes this slight but undeniable charm. It's quiet and contained. Nobody's head gets wrenched off. I kind of enjoyed it. It's like taking a diachronic vacation from today's problems, even though the vacation spot has problems of its own, and the ones off screen are monumental in scope.
It's a puzzling movie, with echoes of autobiographical first stories. It looks like a movie about the author's youth and seems to be an attempt to convey to the audience the emotions that accompanied his early experiences. It resembles other youth movies about the war years. "Hope and Glory" and "Summer of 42" come to mind. Yet the screenwriter was only in his early thirties. Maybe it's something passed on to him by his Dad, in rough form. Maybe it was a gift of the muse.
Whatever it was the production design and location shooting are phenomenal. Makes you want to live in that picturesque and amiable little town of Point Muir, California, up in Mendocino County, even though the movie, supposedly shot around Christmas, must have been shot in the summer. (In the winter, every outdoor scene would have been rained out.) Wardrobe, set dressing, and make up are accurate to the period, and Dave Grusin's musical score is apt.
The script, though it has its drama and suspenseful comedy, is pretty leisurely. The war and the possibility of death hangs over everything like a translucent gray shroud but the events and conflicts we see are small in scale. That's as it should be.
The writer pulls a couple of literary stunts. Early on, there are allusions to Shakespeare, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Homer. I can believe that Penn's father, a grave digger by profession, can say something about "a rose by any other name," but I don't know where a gravedigger would come up with his name for his dog -- Argos. And when they spot McGovern entering the mansion, thinking that her family owns it, Cage remarks that "she's a Gatsby." And Penn understands at once. Okay, I had to read "The Great Gatsby" in high school too but I don't know about today's kids getting it. Last time I checked, the only student in my class who'd read it, got to do so in an advanced placement class in her high school. What a terrible comment on today's youth, he said, gnawing the handle of his cane, his spectacles sliding off into the guacamole, cursing fitfully while searching for his teeth.
Well, there's certainly one way in which the golden age of small-town youthful mores was an improvement over the more recent period in which I grew up -- that unplanned pregnancy by Cage's girl friend, and the oh-so-casual way in which, on only their second date, Penn and McGovern exchange bodily fluids. I can guarantee you that there was nothing like that going on in Hillside High School! No, siree, Bob. Man, it was lousy. But, all seriousness aside, I don't believe there was much of it going on in Point Muir in 1942 either. Another stunt by the writer, called modernizing the mores.
The movie exudes this slight but undeniable charm. It's quiet and contained. Nobody's head gets wrenched off. I kind of enjoyed it. It's like taking a diachronic vacation from today's problems, even though the vacation spot has problems of its own, and the ones off screen are monumental in scope.