Pump Up the Volume

1990 comedic drama

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A young Jack Nicholson impersonator stirs up some trouble in a community with a pirate radio program.

"He sounds like a chronic masturbator."
"He prides himself in it!"

Allan Moyle, who directed this inconsistent attempt to feed into teenage angst, did that VH1 original movie Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story which might be one of the worst things ever created. I watched that as part of my "man movie" streak, one of the 137 movies I watched in a row one summer that had "man" in the title. I'm going to keep mentioning this until somebody notices how impressive a feat this was.

This is better than Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story. In fact, I was really enjoying the first half of the movie, kind of right before a plot or two kicked in. I believe I saw this back when I was supposed to. It came out when I was in high school, but I don't have any memories of it other than two or three scenes that I could have just caught elsewhere. So this didn't have any effect on me as a teenager even though I probably would have liked some of the film's messages about freedom, the importance of having a voice, and adults sucking. And I would have been at just the right age to not realize how silly the messages were coming across. I would have flipped off the screen whenever the principal or the guidance counselors or Teen Wolf's dad were on there, and I would have felt really cool doing it because the movie was telling me how cool that would have been.

As an adult, this doesn't really work. That first half, with the early scenes of Slater doing his radio shtick and the goings-on at the kind of high school that could only exist in an 80's movie, is probably not as dangerous as anybody involved thinks it is, but it does manage to entertain. As it progresses, its ideas are revealed to be too broad, the romantic subplot is contrived, and you really question the lengths the characters are going to get what they want. The movie's cacophony of voices start to sound like white noise.

Christian Slater, playing a character who is "as horny as a ten-peckered owl," gives half of a good performance. The dynamic and confident radio personality with the fluent gift of gab feels natural. He's doing his Jack Nicholson thing, and he's engaging even if it's hard to imagine a kid like this actually existing at any time in the history of adolescents. That contrasted with his other persona, this ultra-shy wallflower who seems like he's almost unable to communicate, was too jarring. They even give Slater some Clark Kent glasses to wear when he's not on the radio. The contrast never felt authentic.

Part of my personal problems with this movie is that I never liked people my own age while growing up. I probably don't like them now either actually, but I definitely didn't like them as teenagers. These are inflated movie versions of those kids--a bunch of dicks--and that made it hard to root for them. Maybe I'm a square. I also thought a shot of boobs in this was tacky, something else that probably makes me a square. And it's just impossible for me to be against Teen Wolf's dad.

I did like the music although I'm not sure how many high school kids appreciated Leonard Cohen's music. Beastie Boys, The Pixies, Richard Hell (a possibly-clever use of "Love Comes in Spurts" during one of Slater's two masturbating-on-the-radio sequences), Sonic Youth. Good stuff.

No Michael Jackson though. This actually had the exact same amount of Michael Jackson songs as Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story--zero.