When they kiss you I bet they put their bubblegum in your mouth

Wait a minute. Are there any closet STEALING HOME fans out there - 'cause it's on Cinemax right this very second and I must say I was shockingly jerked back in time to my teenage love of earnestness and Jodie Foster's irresistible blonde limbs (plus that great husky voiced 'I love ya, Billy Boy' right before she prances off to the sure hell of becoming a middleclass wife and her ultimate demise).

What an odd film, it is though. But, can I just put it out there that this kind of earnest wannabe schmaltz, starring Mark Harmon has about a zillion fairly great moments PLUS both Foster and Blair Brown at the exact peak of perfection. Young and soft and round and just...lovely. Dewy - one might say dewy. Anyway, to be sure it has its fair share of cringe inducing scenes; but, overall there's just something about the Jod-ster and her dead-on take of 'that girl'. The one we all, guys and girls included, sort of fall in love with during our adolesence. The cool babysitter who gives us our first puff of a cigarette, our first swallow of rum, our first glimpse at sexuality. And then she goes and offs herself. Well at least in this movie that's what she does. Right off the bat, she's dead and he's got the ashes, not to mention that he's turned into an honest to god loser somewhere between the age of 18 and 40. Or um....right, yeah, somewhere between stealing home and now. So.

Not that I want you to run out and rent it, but...if you could just close your eyes and remember the film and how you felt when you watched it (if you ever did)...it's one of those things. One of those evokers of fond feelings and true insight somehow into who we were when we were young. Kind of like all that nostalgia packed together into 90 minutes belongs to us all. Rum and cokes and losing our virginity, singing on the beach while fireworks go off overhead, the weird uncomfortable thing it is to be 17 and just thisclose to losing our childhood. But, not yet knowing enough to be sad about it...

Ah. Tuesday nights with Cinemax