In the life of every real man there should be one crazy night, one depraved woman without brakes and one fight not for life, but for death. This does not negate the need to grow trees, sons and build a house. Rather, it is a nice bonus to the proverbial glass of water.
Opposites attract. Good boys fall in love with bad girls and vice versa. Some lack adventures on the fifth point, others have so much that you want to share with your neighbor. Sometimes plus-minus gives you a plus. Like in Jonathan Demme's "The Wild Thing."
... Decent white collar Charlie Drigs, a family man and freshly baked vice president of the company, likes to prank. Forgetting to pay for a business lunch. Such a petty but rebellious prank. Which, moreover, becomes an occasion for a pleasant acquaintance with a pretty breakaway Lulu. The girl offers to give Charlie a ride to work, but the trip ends in a cheap motel, where an office worker breaks the oath of loyalty and shows wonders of quirkiness in a conversation with his boss.
Charlie’s misadventures did not end there. And soon the true reason for such a frank flirtation of a mischievous prankster with an inconspicuous “blazer” became clear. The fact is that Lulu, who is actually Audrey, wants to introduce Charlie to her conservative mom as her acting spouse. Her real husband Ray is happily serving time for robbery, which is unlikely to impress her mom. After a short acquaintance with their parents, the newlyweds go to conquer a rural club at a meeting of Audrey school graduates.
And then Charlie realizes that he hit the tomatoes. When the party suddenly announced the ex-husband of his stunning companion, the evening ceases to be languid. Ray clearly intends to regain his wife’s affection, while Charlie, who is in love with Audrey, is clearly crossing his path. After a short fight, the financier wipes away the bloody snot, loses the remnants of pride and hope for continued flirting. However, Charlie is not a pillow for needles. Feeling a surge of strength from the newly acquired sense of passion, he rushes into pursuit. Love is such a fool...
Full-length Jonathan Demme at home was perceived sluggishly. As a spit in the face of public morality, it was not regarded, the good that the stormy advertising campaign did not receive the tape. However, the conclusions made by the authors did not agree. Since when has Hollywood encouraged a shift in middle-class priorities? What now, throw your cozy, soft-seated office chairs and throw yourself into the wilderness? That’s the message for America’s younger generation. First, family values are trampled on, then drinking while driving and unsafe sex. It'll come to stabbing. I got it. What is the saying, “Better to be a living dog than a dead lion?” It turns out, according to the creators, a young American yuppie, making a career and nurturing a pregnant wife of expressionless appearance (there is such a character in the picture) is a dead animal?
Of course, Demme did not intend to educate the nation. “Wild Thing” is a crazy comedy with a criminal connotation, but not a guide to action. The characters of the film behave exactly as fictional heroes who do not know the laws of the real world should act. Demme distorted reality to allow Charlie and Audrey to rest body and soul without delving into the boring details of the materialistic world. No one disputes that his picture smells of inadequacy and film convention. Do you often meet jerks in your life who are ready to abandon everything for the sake of a random acquaintance and try to take her away from an ex-husband-criminal? Although crazy actions are characteristic of all desperately loving hearts.
The limited success of the film among the mass audience was “contributed” by genre uncertainty, adult rating, and actors’ faces that were not familiar on the screen. "Wild Thing" starts as an uncouth romantic comedy, gradually entangled in a drama with a clear criminal tinge. And the finale returns to the melodrama.
As for the rating, the age bar for the tape was provided by Melanie Griffith’s naked breasts (and other cute places), as well as the level of violence unacceptable for PG-13 (children accompanied by parents). Melanie at that time was just in the search for a type and the option of “bad girl with a good heart” suited her as well as possible. A little later, in the more biased and large-budget melodrama “Business Girl”, where the actress will play in the three with Harrison Ford and Sigourney Weaver, Mademoiselle Griffith will finally move to the “light side of the force”. And in 1986, especially after the chic Thriller De Palma “Place Body”, she could still rake in the frame and flirt with the audience, without worrying about their own career in the movie.
Beautiful in the role of office plankton young Jeff Daniels, morally strengthened after participating in the “Purple rose of Cairo” by Woody Allen. Here he is not at all like his most popular character, Harry from the comedy Dumb and Dumber, although a couple of moments recognize his trademark laugh.
But the main event of the tape is not even the bare breasts of the future wife of Antonio Banderas, and not the unexpected combativity of the clerk, but the brilliant in his anxiety Ray Liotta. This is a really unpredictable type. The picture of Demme became for the serial actor a great debut in a big movie, after which Liotta began to be in high demand in Hollywood. Of course, in the roles of notorious scoundrels. It is amazing how a person manages to emit so much hidden threat with just a glance and a smile. Four years later, the actor will reach the peak of his career, playing for Scorsese in “The Good Guys”.
This is the future Oscar winner (“Silence of the Lambs”) turned out uneven, but charming movie. Not in the tradition of the genre, but beyond it. Like about love, but rather about passion and its consequences.
8 out of 10