One of the things we haven't really talked about in these Cage reviews is the Cage-doo. His hair has a personality of its own. Sometimes it’s long and unkempt; sometimes short and neat. Over the years that hair has receded to the point where only a damn good makeup artist can make you think different. I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation between the hair and the types of characters he plays, but every hairstyle Cage manages to pull off is as memorable as the performance itself. Think Raising Arizona was something? Then you haven’t watched Valley Girl.
“He has a hairdo you have to see to believe,” TIFF program director Jesse Wente told me when we spoke about their Cage retrospective Bangkok Dangerous: The Cinema of Nicolas Cage. And yes, it is truly a mesmerizing head of hair. I would rank it just shy of Flock of Seagulls for most outlandish 80s haircut.
Cage’s hair in Valley Girl is truly part of a different era, much like the film itself. The story is a simple one of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. The setting is “the valley” of course, that section of Los Angeles most people associate with vapid airheads, and the dialog in this movie matches the area’s reputation. (“Like, you know, whatever.”) Hating on its shallowness would be sort of like hating on Glee for its mashups. Ok, it’s easy, but what’s the point? It is what it is.
Basically, Cage plays a kid from Hollywood who meets a “valley girl.” Both are smitten by each other’s differentness, and a montage fills in the rest. Of course her friends disapprove of the relationship. It’s like, they’re from two different worlds, right? (Her parents, however, are surprisingly supportive). Both characters go through the motions of a typical teen romantic comedy. They fight, they breakup, they date other people, but in the end, realize they’re meant for each other. It’s like, Romeo and Juliet, or whatever.
Valley Girl is the kind of movie you put in a time capsule. What struck me about it is how it’s dated in all the right ways. When people unearth teen comedies from this era 30 years from now, I have a feeling they’ll be coated with dated pop culture references and product placement for technology that’s long obsolete.
But the fashion, the dialog, the themes, and particularly the music in Valley Girl are the kind of reminders of the 80s we still hold dear. I couldn’t stop myself from lip-synching to the movie’s soundtrack (“I melt with you” by Modern English plays during the film’s only montage).
Wente told me they chose Valley Girl because it showed Cage developing as an actor, which I can believe. This is his first starring role, and there are signs of the Cage we would grow to love in his performance here, like the short, random outburst and the exaggerated facial gestures. And yet he’s still not at the level of other Cage performances. His character is too much of a doofus for him to exhibit anything remotely charismatic. He also has terrible teeth and trimmed chest hair, which is off-putting to say the least.
But kudos to TIFF for doing this series and running a film like Valley Girl. It’s by no means Cage’s best movie, or most interesting, or even accessible, but an origin story has to start somewhere.
