Thursday, July 4, 2013

Street Smart; 1987

All you should need to know is that Christopher Reeve agreed to inflict Superman IV on the world in order to secure the funding to make Street Smart, which proceeded to recoup less of its budget at the box office than Superman IV.  Oi.

The plot is simple: journalist needs a story and makes one up; it turns out to be true, he gets in hot water for it, and has to find a way out.  It's a good plot, and there are lots of ways to use it, but since the story is about a pimp, it ends up being a gritty little movie about ugly little people. 

This wouldn't be so bad, but I didn't see this movie in 1987.  I watched it for the first time in 2013, and I've already seen Reservoir Dogs.  That movie isn't about pimps, but from 1987's perspective, it was the future of gritty little movies about ugly little people, and once you've seen something like Dogs, you can't go back to the plodding storytelling of Street Smart.


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