1950's swathed in Nostalgia

BOOK OF LOVE (1990)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The Fifties remains an era I am always fascinated by. I think the main reason is because it only seemed so innocent and innocuous but, underneath, there might have been what one Beatnik poet referred to as "intense psychic pain" due to the missile crisis and other factors at that time. Yet movies like "Book of Love" insist that the fifties was an era of innocence and nothing more. Isn't every era innocent?

Jack Twiller (Chris Young) is the new kid on the block. He looks smart, is well-dressed, and takes up dancing lessons thanks to his doting mother. His buddies are Crutch (the always dependable Keith Coogan) and Floyd (James Cameron Mitchell), who looks like a Beatnik poet. They spend their time getting inebriated, taking more dance lessons, driving around and generally goofing off, not to mention lip-synching to "Earth Angel."

Jack is head-over-heels in love with the blond, teasing, beaming Lily (Josie Bissett), who is of course dating a school bully named Angelo (Beau Dremann). Jack wants to take Lily to the school prom, but finds himself ironically asking Gina (Tricia Leigh Fisher), the switchblade sister of the school who is also Angelo's sister, to the prom.

I first saw "Book of Love" back in 1990 with a date and found it funny and pleasing. Seeing it again recently, I found it lesser in quality than I had thought. As directed by Bob Shaye (president of New Line Cinema, who never directed another film since), it is cloying and a little too precious. There are lots of visual gags, like the bodybuilder who emerges from those famous ads to persuade Jack to lift weights, but some of it gets trite after a while. Jack is never a fully developed character - his biggest scene is when he apes Jimmy Dean in "East of Eden." I would have liked to learn more about him as an individual, and why he had such aspirations to become a writer. His buddies are fun to watch but are given little screen time to do anything other than sing and goof off. Ditto the underused Tricia Leigh Fisher as Gina, a bad girl who suddenly shows a sympathetic side. It is hard to see the attraction between Jack and Gina and her tough-girl tomboy image is given meager screen time to make any kind of impression.

There are bookends to "Book of Love" with an older Jack (played by Michael McKean) reminiscing while looking at his high-school yearbook. But this is no "American Graffitti" or "Diner." "Book of Love" safely assumes it is enough to be nostalgic.