Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

• Year: 1987
• Released: 27 Feb 1987
• Country: United States
• Adwords: 1 win
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094006/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/some_kind_of_wonderful
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/some-kind-of-wonderful
• Available in: 720p, 1080p, 720p
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: PG-13
• Genre: Drama, Romance
• Runtime: 95 min
• Writer: John Hughes
• Director: Howard Deutch
• Cast: Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson, Lea Thompson
• Keywords: school, best friend, teen movie, tomboy, female drummer,

	7.0/10
	55/100
	75% – Critics
	80% – Audience

Some Kind of Wonderful Storyline

The teenager Keith is a high-school student and mechanic that lives with his working class family. His father’s ambition is that Keith goes to college but it’s not his priority since he loves Arts. His best friend is the tomboy Watts and the girl of his dreams is the popular Amanda. When she breaks up with his wealthy boyfriend Hardy Jenns, Keith invites Amanda to date and she accepts to get even of Hardy. But the rich boy plans a scheme to humiliate the couple with his friends. Meanwhile Watts discovers her true feelings for Keith.

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Some Kind of Wonderful Movie Reviews

Realistically, this is some kind of unbelievable.

Other than Eric Stoltz, I found the teen characters here completely unrealistic, some of them of late college age, and others either totally unlikable, badly acted, or empty inside where it counts. At times I thought Mary Stuart Masterson came off zombie like, and other times, completely out of character for what she was playing when fully at attention in the part. She’s an outsider, hating the A group (can’t blame her for that…) and at times to only want friendship with Stoltz then staring at him strangely. A girl’s locker room sequence is completely uncomfortable to watch as she looks on at the basically nice Lea Thompson with a combination of lust and loathing. Camera shots going down Thompson’s panty clad body is severely gratuitous.

Then there’s Stoltz’s family: a father who interferes in his desires for his own future, completely obnoxious and despicable; the mother who seemingly ignores her daughter’s out of preference for her son; and the two younger sisters, one just absolutely unlikable and self centered, and the baby just longing for some kind of attention and getting none. The only thing about that family I liked was seeing one of my all time favorite soap divas (Jane Elliott) playing a far cry from Tracy Quartermain as a working class mother. The situation of Thompson apparently using Stoltz to get back at old boyfriend Craig Scheffer was absurd, cliched and boring, presenting an obnoxious story that shows a generation who would now be parents of post college age adults acting just as badly as the young generation today. No wonder adults ignored my generation when I was a teen, and no wonder why my generation ignores high school age kids today!

It could had been a Back to the Future reunion.

Before writer John Hughes got stuck in a formula of the Home Alone movies that bought him paydirt. He dealt with teenage angst, especially the working class kind and contrasted those with the rich spoilt kids.

I was a college student in Britain at the time this film was released. I used to walk or bike to college. A lot of my friends arrived by bus. That some kids arrived to Senior High school in marque cars in America was just an alien concept to us, heck a lot of us could not even afford the insurance to drive to college in a cheap clapped out jalopy.

Some Kind Of Wonderful stars Eric Stoltz as Keith. He works in a garage, his best friend is a tomboy called Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) who also works in the garage with him. Keith’s dad wants him to go to college. He has been saving for years so his son can be the first person in the family to not get his hands dirty.

Keith is infatuated by Amanda (Lea Thompson), the well to do girl who his going out with a brattish rich kid who is mean to her and even cheats on her. What Keith does not see is that Watts is in love with him.

When Keith manages to ask Amanda out for a date, the rich kid plans to give him a beating but Keith has been charming the local bullies at school.

John Hughes had a rather skewed view of blue collar America. It was plainly unrealistic. The characters seem to be cardboard cutouts. The actors playing high school students were just too old and some of them at the time never got the hang of this acting game such as Elias Koteas.

Stolz is rather creepy, always stalking Amanda, something her boyfriend notices. Masterson was the standout but no way was she a tomboy. She was much too attractive and Keith should had been right up there tuning up her engine.

Yet it is still a fun film of its time. I remember buying the soundtrack of this movie.

I Blew My College Tuition For Love And Revenge

Now I’m not totally against these teen angst brat pack films that were so popular in the Eighties and John Hughes was associated with some good ones. But the notion that Eric Stoltz could trash his whole college education tuition fund on an act of revenge against some rich kid is really a bit bizarre. Not a great message to be sending out there John.

But that’s what you have in Some Kind Of Wonderful. Eric Stoltz is this misfit kid, probably born a generation too late, he’d have fit right into the Sixties. What he did would be something kids did back then. They also were a lot less focused, like he is, heck like I was and wished now I wasn’t.

Young Eric wants to be an artist, his parents have saved and scrimped for college tuition. My God he could take art in school for that matter. But now he’s made because a rich young punk played very nicely by Craig Sheffer puts him down on general principles and because Stoltz is crushing out on one of his girl friends, Lea Thompson. In the meantime, tomboy girl Mary Stuart Masterson thinks Stoltz is just the greatest thing around, but he can’t see for the rich princess Masterson just dazzles him.

Sheffer even encourages Thompson to play up to Stoltz to get him to a preppy party that he’s throwing so he and some friends can beat up Stoltz. How Eric deals with this situation makes up the remainder of the film.

I think the parents were right on about Stoltz and this expensive gesture he was making. But I’m sure the attractiveness and capability of the players in this film were what the audience was watching instead of the stupid message that Some Kind Of Wonderful was giving out.