The Sure Thing (1985)

An Exercise In Nonsense

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

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

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

College freshman Gib decides to go cross country to visit his friend in California during winter break. Waiting there for him is a bikini-clad babe whom his friend assures him is a "sure thing". Allison, a retentive girl at Gib's college has also decided to head out to see her boyfriend during break. Gib and Allison are thrust together on a road trip, and somewhere along the way, they find each others company to be tolerable......A staple of eighties Teen movies, it's your age old story of a guy travelling a long way to sew his oats, but obviously falls in love with the stuffy girl who has rejected him time and time again.The clichés are rife throughout, they hate each other to begin with, they begin to grow on one another, become jealous of each other, and what do you know? The final act features a big party, Hawaiian shirts, your token jock best friend, and the nerdy boyfriend.I wouldn't have it any other way. This was the beginning of Cusack's golden age in cinema, and it goes to show just what a great actor he is. He owns the film, and even though he's your atypical college boy, with an awful motivation for travelling, you can't help but like him.The couple both learn life lessons from each other, they run afoul of a few people, there are some funny scenes, nothing hilarious, but it's just a comfort food sort of film.You just know what's going to happen, it ticks every box in the eighties teen comedy checklist, but you just sit there and let it take you away with its nostalgia.

Walter Gibson (John Cusack) and best friend Lance (Anthony Edwards) are graduating high school. He wonders if his best days are over. Gib is floundering in a northeastern college. Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga) in his English class is told by the professor to loosen up. Gib lures her to tutor him but she is completely annoyed by him. Lance is in college in California and he sends him a picture of the Sure Thing (Nicollette Sheridan). Gib gets a ride share with Gary Cooper (Tim Robbins) and Mary Ann Webster (Lisa Jane Persky) but Alison is also in the car on her way to see her boyfriend. Gib and Alison keep fighting and Gary abandons them on the side of the road.This is a traditional rom-com. It's a bit slow at times but in general, the movie works because John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga have good chemistry together. It's not very original. Zuniga is uptight and Cusack is the wild one. They are fire and ice. Of course, they are going to end up together. Rob Reiner shows some skills but also some deficiencies. The movie needs to be quicker and snappier.

John Cusack plays a college freshman who is convinced by his best friend(played by Anthony Edwards) to travel cross-country to his place, where a "Sure Thing"(well cast Nicollette Sheridan!) awaits. Along for the ride to visit her boyfriend is a fellow schoolmate(played by Daphne Zuniga) who is his polar opposite, serious minded to his goof-ball. What do you think the odds are that they will discover that, despite their differences and frequent quarrels, that they're really meant to be together? The answer is obvious in this predictable(though well cast) romantic/road comedy by director Rob Reiner, that has a few laughs(Tim Robbins mostly), but not enough to compensate, and Cusack's character isn't all that endearing either, nor Zuniga's transformation. (She wasn't so bad to begin with!)

Gib Gibson {John Cusack}is on to a "sure thing," the treasure at the end of every horny male college student's rainbow, a guaranteed night of passion with a babe and no strings attached. But there are troubles in his way. Firstly, this "sure thing" {in the shapely form of Nicollette Sheridan} is on the other side of the country, thus he has to hitch his way to nirvana. Secondly, circumstance sees him hitching with his prim and proper class mate, Alison {Daphne Zuniga}, a problem since they really have different ideals and approaches in life.The 80s, a time of "interesting" fashions and lots of hairspray. Also the time of John Hughes and a raft of teen comedies/coming of age semi-serious fluff-a-like dramas. Perhaps, given its make up, the biggest surprise is that The Sure Thing isn't a John Hughes picture. Written by Steven Bloom & Jonathan Roberts, it's directed by Rob Reiner {This Is Spinal Tap/Stand by Me}, with Reiner gleefully remaking Capra's immensely superior It Happened One Night, only for the 1980s colourful tweeners.Naturally it's all too predictable, with some stuff coming off as unimaginative copy-cat scripting, and unlike the Capra movie, The Sure Thing as telling entertainment does not, as some nostalgic 80s lovers proclaim, hold up well today on a revisit. What is evident tho is that Reiner's direction, given the time it was made, is accessible and unhindered by the sign posted nature of the beast. No overwrought angst here, Reiner chooses to focus on the two principals and steers clear of plot twisters and shockers. That has to be applauded, as does the performance of John Cusack, who here in his first full lead portrayal, serves notice of the shtick that would shape the rest of his popular career. That can't be said of Zuniga tho, whose subsequent post "Sure Thing" film career says far more about her ability than I personally wish to write.The only "Sure Thing" here is that I'm sure to annoy the 80s nostalgists who love this film. Yet I'm one of that nostalgic number too, my thick-skin is honed from affection for the likes of Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and Cameron Crowe's excellent Say Anything {Cusack again superb}. But no! The Sure Thing deserves to stay back in 1985 where it belongs, matted down by lashings of hairspray. One really should seek out It Happened One Night instead of suffering the unadventurous writing that, here, is hidden by the affable charm of its leading man. 4.5/10