THE LOST BOYS (1987) - **1/2
Q: What's scarier than a vampire?
A: A vampire with a goddamn mullet!
Vampires may never age, but THE LOST BOYS sure did. With the bleached jeans, pink lights, and bad hair metal rock, I wonder if the legions of fans of this cult classic enjoy the movie itself or for the quick time capsule trip of the Reagan Decade.
A film dated isn't necessarily a bad thing. Several movies from the 1980s have continued on being popular simply because of their quality. GHOSTBUSTERS, BACK TO THE FUTURE, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, DePalma's SCARFACE, and so forth.
Quite simply, I think its nostalgia that fuels Joel Schumacher's movie onward within our pop culture two decades later. I only say that because there is no other reason.
Certainly the movie starts out with some promise, and in fact its first act works as a set-up. Some kids move to a California town where its beaches and broadwalks are ruled by Keifer Sutherland and his gang of youthful vampires who get their kicks (and dinner) from attacking random civilians.
The teenage kid follows his balls, not his brains, and follows a gal from that brood. His younger brother meets up with some comic book store brats who know the exact reason why there are an absurd number of "MISSING" posters plaster-ed everywhere, and obviously have read too much of their own product.
As much as I enjoyed the moments when those vampire hunting wanna-bes confront these vampires, I realized something. I've seen all this before, and in a better movie from 1987. THE MONSTER SQUAD was about adolescents using their encyclopedia of useless knowledge to fight real monsters. We enjoy as those boys actually contend and plan against Dracula, and see them go off to war with the Prince of Darkness.
With THE LOST BOYS, that same concept is pushed aside as background characters supporting the movie's actual storyline. If SQUAD was Shane Black penning a smart-ass kids adventure flick, BOYS is unfortunately the teenie-bopper spin on the material.
BOYS reprises all those 1950s teen rebel cinema cliches. You have the outsider who deals with the charismatic alpha male of a motorcycle outfit. The leader's gal falls for the newcomer, and all hell breaks loose. The twist is that like the orphans who end up in Neverland, these "lost boys" are forever young as they stalk the night. Except, wouldn't that nightly routine get old after a few decades? I mean, I love booze and women, but envitably bore-dom would set in.
I wished the filmmakers had explored that concept some more. Not dwell on and on about it like Anne Rice would, but make a thematic point of how the ultimate freedom for rebellious teens might very well be the worst purgatory of them all.
But once we kick full-on the hero teen's story, BOYS staggers. It goes through the action motions, but the film never really bites into the emotional and storytelling possibilities that the first act bleeds out. If you want that, go rent NEAR DARK.
On the bright side, the Coreys have a film to coast on for the rest of their D-list celebrity days, even if the villain is now more known as a kicker on TV, instead of a sucker.
