The Surest Thing about The Sure Thing

The Surest Thing about the 1985's Rob Reinber/John Cusack romcom The Sure Thing is it's plot.

Whittled down to it's most bare essentials the film builds itself upon one of the most basic concepts of theatrical arts: If you put two completely different people in a room together and have them talk for an hour and a half, they will exit changed by one another. If not, it's tragedy.

This is at the centre of all human drama. First they begin by hating and/or misunderstanding one another out of possibly fear, selfishness or naivety but soon, once they are forced into a situation that requires them to communicate, they grow to learn from one another and fill in the blanks that are missing from their own lives.

12 Angry Men put 12 different men in a room; The Man on the Train had two people come to the philosophical realization that they may have been happier had they led the other's life instead and It Happened One Night found comedy in making the two of opposing sex and putting them on the road together. The list of examples goes on forever. It's hard to screw this kind of thing up.

If anything then, The Sure Thing is It Happened One Night remade for 80s teenagers. It features young, fresh faces, a hip soundtrack and an undiscovered bikini clad blond at the other end of the road.

The film was one of the first to star John Cusack who had graduated into a leading role after haunting the background of John Hughes' Sixteen Candles. Maybe he was always destined to be the leading man Hughes let get away? His presence, over a consistent and long career, in any film always seems to guarantee it at least some degree of enjoyment and Say Anything... still remains the best teen romcom that Hughes failed to make himself.

The Sure Thing -funny, light, enjoyable- in retrospect, is maybe best appreciated as a grounds for Cusack to work out all the kinks in what would later become his most iconic character of the 80s: Loyd Dobler from the aforementioned Say Anything...which came four years later.

Here his Gib is everything we'd come to appreciate about Lloyd: an open, adventurous, likable, charming and funny youth who thinks he's got it all figured out, until nothing ends up happening in his favor, from which he actually does end up getting it all figured out.

In this case he's flunking university English on the East Coast where he has a secret crush on the class prude (Daphne Zuniga) who's in the opposite boat as him. Her mechanics are perfect but writing lifeless. She needs to live a little.

Then, not on the best terms to begin with, they get stuck together riding West to L.A. for the Christmas break (with a funny showtune singing cameo from Tim Robbins). She's visiting her lawyer-to-be boyfriend who's idea of a good time is giving her the lead in a game of gin, and he's going to visit his high school bestie who's promised to hook him up with a sure fire West Coast lay (Nicollette Sheridan in her first film role).

You can fill in the blanks from there.

And yes, they do change, become better people, learn their lessons and so on down the line. That's why, as the age old cliche continues to go, opposites do attract. Most movie characters just need a cross country road trip to realize it.

Movies That Made Going To the Movies Suck #27: It Happened One Night

Ditty Appears Courtesy of Elizabethan Theatre




Ah, the romantic comedy. Once a person begins to self-identify as a film enthusiast or a cinephile, one is supposed to turn down his or her nose at the modern entries in the genre. And let's face it: the romantic comedy of today is quite often a pale and weak imitation of the great romantic comedies of the past. Whether it's Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Lady Eve, or any of the other stellar picks from the 1930s and 1940s, there's one romantic comedy for everyone that more or less forever ruins the genre. The king of them all, the one that ushered in the screwball comedy and the modern romantic comedy, is It Happened One Night.

Starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, it follows the story of Ellie Andrews, a young, spoiled woman who, in a fit of rebellion, marries fortune hunter Westley King. Her father collects her before the marriage can be consummated only to have her run away once again. On board a bus to New York City, she happens upon one Mr. Peter Warne. Turns out he's a down-on-his-luck reporter in need of a good story, so he blackmails her: either she gives him an exclusive, or he'll rat her out to her father (and collect a handsome reward for it, too). Not a complete cad, he does offer to help reunite her with her beloved quasi-husband (readers love a happy ending).

Now, because the story arc of 90 percent of romantic comedies to follow used this one as a template, we can guess what happens. They hate each other at first, but she's a little charmed by him, and he's a little amused by her. Charm and amusement turn to affection, and all of a sudden it's "Westley who?" Of course, there's confusion and misunderstanding that leads to Boy Losing Girl, only to prove his worth and eventually get her back.

Along with the now-familiar storyline, we also get now-familiar comedic set pieces. The Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better Moment, for instance, features Gable's Peter trying to flag down a car, claiming to be an expert at hitchhiking. He must fail so that Ellie can hike up her skirt, show a little leg, and convince the very next car (screeching tries and all) that he needs to offer this woman a ride. There's also the Forced Into Close Quarters bit, where Peter and Ellie are forced to pretend to be man and wife to hide her identity. This means they have to share a motel room, of course, though the morals of the time demanded separate beds and a curtain strung up between them for propriety's sake. And the ever-important I'm Not The Man She Thinks I Am moment, where Peter takes the high road by not accepting the cash reward for returning her to her father because he's fallen in love with her.

The difference between this film and the cookie-cutter romantic comedies that follow is that, even now, the film has a certain energy you can't quite describe. It feels fresh, even though we've seen it hundreds of times over. Every once in a while, a romantic comedy captures some of that same spark, even if just for a moment. And I think that's why we keep coming back, hoping for the best from the genre, even when we're not supposed to. We're waiting for that moment when the romantic comedy can prove its worth, regain its honor, and recapture those magical moments we experienced in the past together with films like It Happened One Night. The truth is, when romantic comedy is at its best, the genre contains some of the greatest films and film moments in history.

Legend tells us that, after finishing, Colbert complained to a friend that she'd just completed "the worst picture in the world" — funny considering the film went on to win the Big Five Oscars, including a Best Actress statue for Colbert herself. Perhaps a more accurate lament would have been that she'd just cemented the rise of the genre that created some of the worst pictures in the world — but also some of the best.