Risky Business (1983)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Is a genius. A visual masterpiece, and one of the most underrated movies of the genre to ever be made. It's too bad Brickman only made one movie in the 80's, and walked away from Hollywood for 7 years due to the success of the film. Do yourself a favor, rewatch it again...

I live in the Chicago suburbs, am on break from college, and my parents just went away, leaving the house to me. :)But actually, I wish I had heard about what this was about a few years ago when I was Joel's age, just to make our lives that much more similar. The film on the other hand, I have major issues with. Cruise has great charisma, but the choices his character makes are increasingly dumb. Like how is he not furious at this prostitute for stealing from him the first time? He barely said anything to her, then let her stay over again. Why didn't he go to police in first place? I honestly can't respect this character if he has zero responsibility. Everything bad that happened to him in this movie was ultimately his own fault.Overall, it was a fun movie, but took way too much suspension of disbelief to get through and I just could not respect the character at all.

I honestly didn't realise Tom Cruise looked absolutely handsome when he was younger. There are scenes that can really confuse you like the girl he was hooking up wanted $300 and then when he couldn't get it and then he finds out who she was, she didn't want it. Also Guido takes his stuff and asks him for money, he probably should've called the police to be honest with you. I mean, it didn't make sense for him to be bribed like that, it really is stressful and dangerous for a young kid like him to be in that situation.Near the ending, when things were back to normal and in the right places, the mother was such a wimp just because there was a small crack on her glass egg. Such a stupid scene to have in this type of movie or even the script on that note was quite stupid! That's the only massive hiccup that cheesed me off with this film! Ill give this movie a 7/10, it was an OK film but that part I told ya about,threw me off a little bit....

It may be difficult for some, and for the younger ones the context is not there, but do you remember when Tom Cruise really gave a full PERFORMANCE? By this I mean in a movie where he had to play at a full range of emotions and explore a character who has to face real obstacles and has an arc that takes him on a journey from one place in his life to another - in this case the "coming of age" story, perhaps some pun intended- but one that didn't require him to run away from explosions or kill people (I won't say he doesn't run at all in this movie, though here it's for things like making sure he's not late to school)? This is one of them, the one that made him a star, and it's clear to see why as we see him as Joel start out in a rather simple position - a teenager with girls on his mind (or, more accurately, sex) but with some neuroses and doubts - and through some decisions involving the idea of "hey, f*** it" gets in way over his head.Risky Business is the kind of film that might not be able to get made today; imagine a studio exec hearing a pitch that involved a teenager getting a call girl, let alone setting up basically a (brief) brothel out of his house, to pay off some very bad luck moments and decisions he gets in to with the Rebecca Demornay character (and Joe Pantoliano, what a great heel he gets to play the hell out of! every moment's a delight that he's on screen). It probably would be laughed off, or told it wouldn't make much money. I'm glad someone took a chance on it at the time, since it holds up today. For the most part. As long as you meet it halfway, which isn't too hard. Indeed Brickman's tone as a filmmaker is to make things feel rather serious and grounded in the style so that when their is humor, and there's a lot, it comes out of awkward tension and behavior.It has a constantly fascinating mix of comedy and drama not unlike The Graduate. No, it's not in that league, but Brickman swings for the fences as far as depicting as honestly as he can under the circumstances he sets up for himself (which are a little just pre-John Hughes world, it IS Illinois by the way so the milieu is somewhat the same). You feel the struggle that Joel has, and hope that he can get out of his predicament, though at the same time he keeps getting into more precarious waters. It's relatable, especially if anyone ever got into just a little trouble as a younger person, which I assume are most of you. It's simply that Risky Business takes things further and further along.And it's sexy. Boy is it a sexy looking, sounding (Tangerine Dream's score is wonderful), and acted and performed. But it also finds the humor in sex too, how absurd it is to suddenly see about a dozen beautiful women come through a door, one by one. So if you want to see a studio dramedy that takes chances with an early Tom Cruise performance where he's acting his ass off, this is one. You have to suspend your disbelief, such as for how things like money transactions with prostitutes actually work and how it seems like ALL of the male high schoolers and ALL the attractive call girls just happen to be around and willing to go for it over one night), but as the film plays you really don't question things too much and can go with the fun and real *stakes* that this very R-rated story has.It's comical, thrilling, and it takes genuinely surprising turns that come naturally from plants and payoffs in the story. Risky Business is not at all what I expected, which was just some goofy and dopey teen comedy (the iconic, yes, iconic, shot of Tom Cruise in the underwear doing the first lip-sync battle with no one to Bob Seger was all I really knew about it), and what I got is a movie for adults that happens to have teenagers as the main characters.