Lucas

Peter McGinnSep 2020

3.5

This is one of many movies I watched and recorded many, many years ago, probably off the fairly new HBO channel. I liked it enough at the time to not only keep the vhs tape, but also, when we transitioned to dvd, I used my DVD player/recorder to transfer it to a disk. Of course the viewing quality is subpar, but when I saw it is on a streaming service I don’t subscribe to, I decided to watch my flawed copy. I didn’t quite like it as much as I did previously, but perhaps the intervening 30 years have something to do with that. It is still a pleasant watch. Corey Haim does a fine job portraying the brainy nerd who is advanced scholastically and attends with students a couple years old than he is. He is basically a Junior high (or middle school) student in high school. Lucas spends much of the movie pretending. He assumes he has a chance with an attractive older girl who obviously just wants to be friends, he tells fibs about his living situation, and he unrealistically tries out for the football team. I thought the movie could have done more with Winona Rider’s character. She has a few lines but she is interested in Lucas herself, and I suspect more of her was on the cutting room floor. The scenes of the actual football plays on the field were totally false. I know that science fiction, for example, doesn’t always use appropriate science to explain stuff that happens, but just a little consulting with someone who knows the game at all could have made the plays accurate without changing the result. Come on, refs! There is a small twist at the end that is a nice touch, an appropriate ending for a movie aimed largely at teens.

"Lucas" is a low key film throughout which tackles the difficult subject of first love and all the pain and heartbreak it can sometimes bring. It doesn't treat such delicate matters of the heart in a superficial manner and there is ample opportunity to actually get to know the small ensemble of characters at the heart of this film and that provides us with a genuine reason to become interested in them and in what happens to each one of them during the unfolding events of the story. The overall ambitions of this film are extremely modest and that is its strength, so when young Lucas achieves a measure of respect from his once dismissive peers this triumph has a lasting effect in what is essentially a memorable and well made film.