March is all about brackets. Of course I refer to March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament, where 64 teams compete to win the national championship. It's easily the best time of the year for sports; the NCAA tournament is better than the Superbowl, NBA Finals, World Series, and Stanley Cup Final combined (well, it's pretty damn good anyway).
In anticipation of March Madness I am pitting 1980s movies against one another in similar fashion as the NCAA tournament. I mostly choose popular comedies and acknowledge that others could potentially make the list. Treat omissions as bubble teams who got knocked out by automatic-bid tournament winners from lesser conferences. Or consider that I was too lazy to do an extensive search on every movie from the era. Feh! Whatever. We'll start with 64 seeded "teams" who will compete against one another, elimating movies round by round until one final movie remains. The last standing will be considered the greatest 80s comedy movie .
Below are the entries and their corresponding seeds for Bracket 1. The winner of Bracket 1 will play Bracket 2's winner in the final four; likewise with Brackets 3 and 4. The overall winner from Brackets 1 and 2 will play the overall winner from Brackets 3 and 4 in the national championship game. Let's call Bracket 1 the "Haim/Feldman" bracket in reverence to the two Coreys who were ubiquitous in the 80s.
Bracket 1 (Haim/Feldman Bracket)
1. Revenge of the Nerds
16. One Crazy Summer
8. Just One of the Guys
9. Can't Buy Me Love
5. Better Off Dead
12. Heathers
4. Back to School
13. 9 to 5
6. Police Academy
11. Johnny Dangerously
3. Stripes
14. Young Einstein
7. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
10. The 'Burbs
2. The Money Pit
15. Breaking all the Rules
Round 1 Results: Haim/Feldman Bracket
The 1/16 match up is
Revenge of the Nerds vs.
One Crazy Summer. Gilbert and Lewis vs. Hoops McCann. The extensive nerd roster in
Revenge of the Nerds gives it an edge over
One Crazy Summer regarding characters (though Bobcat Goldthwait and the villainous father/son tandem are both awesome). Poindexter's violin playing, Takashi's tricycle booze race, Booger's wonderjoints, and Stan Gable's general awesomeness make
Nerds the '91 UNLV
Runnin' Rebels of this bracket.
Revenge of the Nerds has greater "re-watchability" too, and there are far more memorable quotes ("We've got bush!" and "Mopery is exposing yourself to a blind person"). It's probably a push as to who is hotter, Cassandra (Demi Moore) in
One Crazy Summer or Bettie Childs (Julia Montgomery) in
Revenge of the Nerds. The nerd train of Omega Mu's entering Lamda Lamda Lamda's party proves too much for
One Crazy Summer.
Revenge of the Nerds wins in a rout.
The 8/9 match up between
Just One of the Guys and
Can't Buy Me Love is close. Both are classic teen romantic comedies, and both have great secondary characters (e.g. Kenneth "You shit on my house!" Wurman (Courtney Gains) and Chucky Miller (Seth Green) in
Can't Buy Me Love; Buddy (Billy Jayne) and the alien twins in
Just One of the Guys). It's another toss up as to who is hotter, Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson) in
Can't Buy me Love or Terry Griffith (Joyce Hyser) in
Just One of the Guys. I guess Cindy gets the nod since Terry dresses like a dude throughout
Just One of the Guys. Even with
Just One of the Guys featuring a young Sherilyn Fenn (Sandy),
Can't Buy Me Love wins by 8 points.
You might think the 5/12 match up in this bracket would follow the real NCAAs with the 12 seed upsetting the 5 seed. Nope. Not in Bracket 1.
Heathers is a great dark comedy featuring some memorable one liners ("Fuck me gently with a chainsaw"; "I love my dead gay son") and Christian Slater in his prime. It also showcases a young Winona Ryder before she started shoplifting. But,
Better Off Dead has the "2 dollars" paperboy and Monique from France (Diane Franklin). She loves baseball, she fixes cars, and she lives across the street. Game, set, match. Lane Myers (John Cusack) scores 27 points and
Better Off Dead never trails to secure the win.
The 4/13 seed is a blowout. Does anyone seriously think Violet Newstead (Lily Tomlin) and Judy Bernly (Jane Fonda) could compete with Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield)? Derek Lutz (Robert Downey Jr.) vs. Franklin M. Hart Jr. (Dabney Coleman)?
9 to 5 plays a soft zone;
Back to School full-court presses a la the '90s Arkansas Razorbacks' "40 minutes of hell." Result:
Back to School up by 20 at halftime, wins by 35.
The 6/11 seeds are closer than one might think.
Johnny Dangerously is one of the most underrated (and perhaps unknown) films of the 80s. It's really funny.
Johnny Dangerously features Michael Keaton at his height and Joe Piscopo before he (allegedly) started eating steroids. The short film on ESS (enlarged scrotum syndrome) is classic too. But,
Police Academy is just too strong. Kim Cattrall (when she was hot and not yet in her 90s like in
Sex and the City) gets a slight nod over Marilu Henner as eye candy. Winning play:
Police Academy having the balls to write a line for cadet Chad Copeland (Scott Thompson) to say "There sure are a lot of spades around here" while standing next to Bubba Smith. Lieutenant Harris (G. W. Bailey) coaches the cadets past
Johnny Dangerously;
Police Academy wins by 7.
The 3/14 match up between
Stripes and
Young Einstein is tougher to call than one might think.
Stripes is the obvious favorite as it has a star-studded lineup (Bill Murray, John Larroquette, and John Candy) and received far more publicity.
Young Einstein features Yahoo Serious and a slew of no-name actors. But,
Young Einstein has its moments and is more sophisticated in comparison.
Stripes follows the formula that made similar movies like
Meatballs and
Caddyshack successful: create a basic plot and let the talent carry the load. Even so, the talent in
Stripes overwhelms the lesser opponent in the end:
Stripes wins by 10.
The 7/10 match up of
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and
The 'Burbs is a classic smack-down among A-list movie stars. Michael Caine and Steve Martin vs. Tom Hanks, Carrie Fisher, and Bruce Dern.
The 'Burbs even has Corey Feldman, which adds obvious clout to any movie from this era. Both movies offer plot twists, light suspense, and dark humor. A buzzer-beating 3-point shot gives
The 'Burbs the win. The fact that Bruce Dern's character (Mark Rumsfield) is older than everyone else yet has a super young and hot wife (Bonnie Rumsfield, played by Wendy Shaal) who wears next to nothing throughout the movie doesn't hurt either.
The final match up in round 1 of the Haim/Feldman bracket is the 2 seed
The Money Pit vs. 15 seed
Breaking all the Rules. Everyone's seen
The Money Pit. Three people (including me) have seen
Breaking all the Rules (the 1985 version, not to be confused with 2004's version with Jamie Foxx).
Breaking all the Rules is a super-obscure, low budget 80s movie that deserves to be in this tournament. It doesn't hold up particularily well over the years, and it has a cheesy cast of 80s-style villains (including a lesbian thief, played by Papusha Demitro). But, there are a lot of funny moments, including when one of the main characters (Jack, played by Carl Marotte) wears a dick-nose mask and proclaims, "As long as I have a face, girls have a place to sit." Another classic line occurs between two kids who discover Debbie (Carolyn Dunn) pulling up Jack's zipper with her teeth. One kid is younger than the other and asks, "What were they doing?" The older kid responds in a deadpan, expressionless fashion: "Blow job." Nonetheless, even the gratuitous T & A displayed by Debbie and Angie (Rachel Hayward) in
Breaking all the Rules aren't enough to pull the upset on
The Money Pit. Tom Hanks before he got serious and lame coupled with Shelley Long prior to
Troop Beverly Hills (ouch) is enough to push
The Money Pit into the second round:
The Money Pit wins by 14.
OK, round 1 of the Haim/Feldman Bracket is in the books with
Revenge of the Nerds, Can't Buy Me Love, Better Off Dead, Back to School, Police Academy, Stripes, The 'Burbs, and The Money Pit moving on to the second round. Look for part 2 of the
80s Movie Smack-Off March 1st, when we examine Bracket 2, the "Gag Me with a Spoon" bracket.
