By now we are familiar with this story. It's the classic opposites attract, love/hate relationship; the loud, obnoxious Walter stuck with the preppy, uptight Alison on a lengthy road-trip. This is best remembered from the Frank Capra classic It Happened One Night, where the class divide was the prominent divider, not simply romance. At the start of the journey Claudette Colbert is convinced that Clark Gable is only in it for the story and money (and in a way he is), and by the end they have fallen deeply in love, although they refuse to believe it themselves even as we see it clearly. So Cusack and Zuniga are from the outset fighting an uphill battle, because there is no doubt that the two will end up together by the end of the movie. And yet it has charm.
Cusack taps into the persona that first made him famous in the numerous teen movies of his early career; the brash, overconfident, self-absorbed type from Better Off Dead. The Sure Thing is not necessarily a teen movie, since the characters are in college, but that has never stopped Cusack: he played a similar role in High Fidelity as the adult that had not grown up. Here he is also a teen in spirit. When he saves Alison from a sure rape on the road, he cannot help being high and mighty about it, rubbing it in her face, and then only then does he comfort and make sure she is okay. But Cusack has always played this character with a undertone of insecurity behind the overt cockiness. He's good looking, but not that good looking that he is already with someone as attractive as the Sure Thing, so we feel he is overcompensating for his insecurities. Too proud to admit these, he instead goes for the very loud and showy path but ends up saying very little.
His chemistry with Zuniga is evident. Just like Colbert and Cable delightfully improvise the sketch of a warring married couple, so too do they, feigning pregnancy and arguing about baby names, feeding each other from each end of the table, going through the whole routine when Walter stumbles into the room after a night of drinking. They take turns looking after each other, and we can feel their walls breaking down, their inhibitions swept away by the circumstances. They say goodnight on edge, nervously vying for space on the double bed, and end up spooning on the one side. Before the pan even reveals this we know it. But there is heart within the predictability; Alison wakes up in the strange new position, and instead of throwing a fuss, smiles and savours it. Cusack plays the awkwardness perfectly - anxiously denying any wrongdoing, clumsily trying to gain a foothold and stumbling, and the tables flip, with her sweetly easing his worries.
The film can also be quite funny, which is whenever Rob Reiner is allowed to tap into his natural sensibility for humour. The adolescent mind of Walter allows for some liberties; the Sure Thing's dream sequences are exaggerated in a way that only a sex-starved teen could do, she praising his sexual prowess like some sort of literary professor (no doubt reality mixing with his fantasies). The side characters are given life, a rarity for this genre. Tim Robbins is hilarious as one half the showtune- loving middle-aged couple, indignantly refusing to sing along because of his guest's icy silence. And there is the obstacle of the dignified boyfriend Jason, who indulges only in tiny delights like a tedious card game and intimacies like side hugs. "Disneyland is for children," he chastises, doing an impeccable impersonation of her father. In a lesser film he would be some meathead, or be found between the sheets with a similar blonde bombshell like the Sure Thing, pushing the lead pair together. But Reiner doesn't succumb to such contrivances. He draws their actions appropriate to their ages; they're hesitant, tentative, and despite how they want to appear, a little apprehensive at just jumping into bed with the hottest thing around. He eventually realises that he does not even know the Sure Thing's name, and that perhaps what he has been travelling across the country for was really right there by his side all along.
Cusack taps into the persona that first made him famous in the numerous teen movies of his early career; the brash, overconfident, self-absorbed type from Better Off Dead. The Sure Thing is not necessarily a teen movie, since the characters are in college, but that has never stopped Cusack: he played a similar role in High Fidelity as the adult that had not grown up. Here he is also a teen in spirit. When he saves Alison from a sure rape on the road, he cannot help being high and mighty about it, rubbing it in her face, and then only then does he comfort and make sure she is okay. But Cusack has always played this character with a undertone of insecurity behind the overt cockiness. He's good looking, but not that good looking that he is already with someone as attractive as the Sure Thing, so we feel he is overcompensating for his insecurities. Too proud to admit these, he instead goes for the very loud and showy path but ends up saying very little.
His chemistry with Zuniga is evident. Just like Colbert and Cable delightfully improvise the sketch of a warring married couple, so too do they, feigning pregnancy and arguing about baby names, feeding each other from each end of the table, going through the whole routine when Walter stumbles into the room after a night of drinking. They take turns looking after each other, and we can feel their walls breaking down, their inhibitions swept away by the circumstances. They say goodnight on edge, nervously vying for space on the double bed, and end up spooning on the one side. Before the pan even reveals this we know it. But there is heart within the predictability; Alison wakes up in the strange new position, and instead of throwing a fuss, smiles and savours it. Cusack plays the awkwardness perfectly - anxiously denying any wrongdoing, clumsily trying to gain a foothold and stumbling, and the tables flip, with her sweetly easing his worries.
The film can also be quite funny, which is whenever Rob Reiner is allowed to tap into his natural sensibility for humour. The adolescent mind of Walter allows for some liberties; the Sure Thing's dream sequences are exaggerated in a way that only a sex-starved teen could do, she praising his sexual prowess like some sort of literary professor (no doubt reality mixing with his fantasies). The side characters are given life, a rarity for this genre. Tim Robbins is hilarious as one half the showtune- loving middle-aged couple, indignantly refusing to sing along because of his guest's icy silence. And there is the obstacle of the dignified boyfriend Jason, who indulges only in tiny delights like a tedious card game and intimacies like side hugs. "Disneyland is for children," he chastises, doing an impeccable impersonation of her father. In a lesser film he would be some meathead, or be found between the sheets with a similar blonde bombshell like the Sure Thing, pushing the lead pair together. But Reiner doesn't succumb to such contrivances. He draws their actions appropriate to their ages; they're hesitant, tentative, and despite how they want to appear, a little apprehensive at just jumping into bed with the hottest thing around. He eventually realises that he does not even know the Sure Thing's name, and that perhaps what he has been travelling across the country for was really right there by his side all along.