Word: hoppers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Henry "Hopper" Nash, (Sean Penn), the film's protagonist, is a James Dean facsimile who struggles to win the heart of a supposedly wealthy schoolgirl, Caddie (Elizabeth McGovern), by leaving her flowers and playing tunes for her on the piano. When not occupied with thoughts of Caddie, Hopper--Nash's affectionate nickname--work as a pin boy at the local bowling alley, pals around with his high school buddy. Nick (Nick Cage) and romanticizes about going off to battle and blowing up Japs...
From the movie's opening scenes in which Hopper practices piano in a distinctly American living room, the film sets itself up as a voice of patriotism and loyalty. Although Hopper defies his crotchety piano teacher by playing jazz instead of classics and hangs out with the shiftless and disreputable Nicky, the director emphasizes Hooper's innate goodness. He doesn't put on airs to woo the snooty upper class preps who ridicule him at the bowling alley and even when he discovers that Caddie is an upper class "Gatsby girl," he takes pride in his humble, yet honorable, origins...
Such sincerity makes for nice fairy tales, but it fails to provide the characters with the necessary degree of depth they so desperately lack. It is precisely because Hopper is such a loyal patriot and sensitive lover that the film so frequently seems maudlin, and precisely because the preps wear checkered sweaters while jeering at the working class boys that the characters seem like cardboard replicas from an I.,I., Bean catalogue...
...highly derivative and unoriginal quality of the film proves equally cumbersome in terms of dialogue. Hopper and Nicky parrot patriotic cliches about the war, stopping only once during the course of the movie--and then only briefly--to ponder the less glorified side of combat. When the film occasionally does try to explore the inner feelings of the characters--as in the father/son exchanges--gushy lines like "I'll bet she looks like a rose and smells as sweet," turn genuine sincerity into sappy sentimentality. We are only relieved that Hopper refrains from responding. "All's fair in love...
...Dartmouth that quotes. Professor of Classics Edward Bradley "Fraternities and sororities used to be needed at institutions to mix students coming from totally different backgrounds," he said at their Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. "Today, however, creating homogeneous bodies is not important. Instead we need to establish a social hopper which respects diversity...