Robert J. Maxwell
In the middle of World War II, in the absence of many men from the usual breeding pool in Los Angeles, Sonny Wisecarver (Patrick Dempsey), a fifteen-year-old boy who is tall for his age, runs off with two grown women. Woman number one is six years older than he is, and dim witted and horny. Woman number two is ten years older, and horny and dim-witted.The first time it's with Thalia Balsam, the common-law wife of a great bruiser named Carlo and the mother of two babies. They get married in Yuma, spend a night together, and get caught. The love affair is broken up by the stern and cynical judge who is not influenced by Sonny's apparent charm.The second time, he runs away from his job in a tuna-processing plant with the wife of a overseas Marine. This time there's no question of love on the part of either party. They get caught, the affair is broken up, the same judge now sends Sonny to a camp run by the California Youth Authority. Sonny doesn't like the camp and runs away.With all these tabloid headlines, Sonny becomes a hero -- dubbed "The Woo Woo Kid" -- and all the restless young women salivating over him. He's "the perfect mate" who really "knows how to make love", say the papers. "He's done it again!", says the Newsreel voice.At first, my impression of Sonny Wisecarver was that he was just a dumb high-school kid who committed a foolish and impulsive act, running away from home and from school with a pretty woman he had a crush on. But, listening to his ironic and self-pitying narration, I began to think he might be one of those people who hunger so rabidly for attention that they'll take a nose dive off the Empire State if a camera is rolling.Then, with his escape from the corrections facility, the clinical picture became a little clearer. He seemed less like a wayward and naive teen ager and more like a good example of what's now called "anti-social personality, socialized type." A generation ago he would have been called a "sociopath" and before that a "psychopath." His stimulus hunger takes him wherever whimsy dictates. And meanwhile he's "laying pipe", as he puts it.The writers and director try their damnedest to make us like Sonny. Like Forrest Gump, he seems at once good-natured, generous, stupid, and perceptive. Whether you'll yield to those demands depends on your ability to swallow some scenes that are obviously contrived for the purpose of making the film itself likable and up tempo. For instance, when Sonny leaps off a train on which he's been identified as a fugitive, he runs at full fifteen-year-old speed down a rural road pursued by ladies in high heels. The scene is ludicrous, but whether a given viewer buys it or not is problematic. And it raises the question of what else has been falsified for the sake of promoting our identification with this poor love-sick child.Dempsey is adequate, but he's outmatched by both of his female partners. Thalia Balsam, Martin's daughter, captures the defeated but not hopeless, impoverished wife perfectly. She's big-eyed and sweet and speaks with an endearing lisp. After she's out of the picture by order of the court, the writers wisely give us a shot of her wounded expression while reading about Sonny's second adventure. See, for her, it really MAY have had something to do with "love". And Beverly D'Angelo as the second kid-napper outclasses Dempsey as the defiant and aggressively sexual, cheating wife of the Marine. The direction is functional, the musical score is all 1944 big band and Billy Holiday, and the production design by Dennis Gassner is evocative. One shot shows Balsam's fingernails painted a deep scarlet -- not the glossy, long, claw-like shrimp-pink of a Hollywood actress, but the clipped and gnawed fingernails of a working girl wearing cheap-looking polish. In a way it's a pretty distasteful movie. I don't mean that to refer to anything remotely connected with the sex or the affection, but with the fact that this movie tries to make a heroic figure out of someone who has little regard for his parents, his friends, or his own future. Doing deviant stuff isn't necessarily funny. Taking off without explanation from home and school leaves baffled and worried parents behind. Balsam's character winds up betrayed. D'Angelo's husband is cuckolded. And it's all a big joke?
PretoriaDZ
In these days of headlines about women abusing boys for their own emotional and sexual needs, this movie definitely is a creepy idea. Even though it is generally thought that boys and men will get "it" wherever they can, the truth is, inappropriate relationships cause psychological damage to all concerned. A 15-year old boy has an unformed character, the same as a 15-year old girl, has an unformed personality, not yet strong enough to withstand the impact of a sexual relationship and emerge unscathed. And a woman who would enter into such a relationship obviously is already damaged goods.Patrick Dempsey himself did apparently have an appreciation for older women and went on to marry a woman who played a character on a train in the movie. He was 21 at the time and she was 48.
dahfu
I must have watched this film close to ten times by now and I've enjoyed it every time. The script is charming, the acting great, the direction masterful and the sense of time and place very convincing. To top it off, it's even a true story. I love this film and I wish they'd bring it out on DVD.
