Whatever Happened To The 80's (A Call To Filmmakers)

I was browsing through my movie collection, when I came across Brick; an amazing modern take on crime noir stories staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer, Inception) and I started thinking about all these throw-back films. The works of Quentin Tarantino, or the hilarious 1970's Blaxploitation film 'Black Dynamite' made in 2009.
There are so many movies that don't just parody the cliches of the decades but embrace and celebrate them. Grindhouse was an attempt to push the violent exploitation films of the 60's and 70's back into culture. Kill Bill was a modern take on classic Kung-Fu movies, even going as far as to borrow characters from a few obscure titles.

But where is the 80's movie?

And where's my gay-looking hover-board?

The 80's was a robust centre of ridiculous story-lines and settings. A time where computers could literally do anything the writer wanted them to do, from taking over the world to turning a barbie doll into an all-powerful super-babe. A time when leading actors were homely and wore Bill Cosby sweaters and Robert Downy Jr. had to settle for the school bully.

The two in the middle are the heroes.

The 1980's was at a perfect moment in time where technology was really starting to evolve but no one really understood it's limitations yet. Back To The Future showed us that eventually we'd all have flying cars but would still use a fax machines. That advertisements would jump at you in holograms, cellular phones will fit in your pocket and everything will run on garbage. While in hindsight their vision of the world seems hilarious, truly it was a time of hope and wonder, when children would look at the single computer their school could afford and imagine the robots that were surely only years away.

'And they will look like Molly Ringwald...'

But why has not one filmmaker tapped into this rich tapestry of not only ridiculous hijinks, but deep personal exploration? No era has captured the teen movie quite like the 80's. Television shows and movies aimed at Teenagers these days are all about sex and fantasy, they show life to be more exciting than it really is. Teenagers these days are looking for escape from the bland nature of their real life, so they cling to love triangles and drug overdoes. Tell their friends how much Skins is just their life on television, when in reality every single one of them would find the Breakfast Club more relatable.

I want a film to come out that revolves around a cocky lazy scoundrel, and his bland yet likable lackey. I want the girls to wear shoulder pads and kids to wear rollerblades. I don't want the teachers to be inspirational, teaching hard-learned lessons to troubled kids. I want the teachers to be buzz-kills, that represent 'The Man' and need to be outsmarted by our lovable scamp. I want my nerds to be cute, my cheerleaders to be gullible and for the Jocks to be complete assholes that get what's coming to them. I want everything that can go wrong to go wrong, and then I want everything to somehow get fixed at the last minute... and I want the parents to never be around for some reason.

I want an 80's movie.