I was watching some old videotapes from my collection and stumbled upon an "Ebert & Roeper" TV show from 2003. This is what film critic Roger Ebert said in one of his reviews on the show, for his "DVD Pick Of The Week", taken from my transcript:
quote:"Also new on DVD this week, is "Smooth Talk", an extraordinary 1985 film starring Laura Dern as a bored teenager who likes to look sexy but doesn't know how to handle her sexuality. She meets an older guy played by Treat Williams, who is all wrong for her, and robs her of her innocence. Not physically, but spiritually, in one of the most powerful dialogue scenes I have ever seen.
Smooth Talk, directed by Joyce Chopra, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance [Film Festival] in 1986, and there is a special quality and fear and menace in the way the Treat Williams character talks the young woman into a psychological hell."
The movie was based on a Joyce Carol Oates short story (which I have not read), and I understand that the movie tampered a lot with the original story's ending. And, as is so often the case, it seems that most of the people who read the story was disappointed with the movie version, which went for a more conventional "happy" ending.
So, has anyone seen this movie? Would you recommend it?
Posted by Riptide (Member # 457) on :
I own this movie. It has it's tense moments, it really makes you think hwta kind of scary world is out there with people like Treat Williams in the movie preying on young girls. There's some good 80's moments too with the fashions, the scenery. In fact the mall Laura Dern and her friend frequent in the beginning of the movie isn't that far off from the mall in Valley Girl of Not too cool Julie moments. Add this to the pile of non-DVD's as well, go figure.
