License to Drive [1988] review

In honor of Corey Haim’s memory, and to revisit a movie that has long had legendary status in my teenage recollections, this Saturday’s movie was LICENSE TO DRIVE.  I can remember being stoked to go see this movie when it came out in theaters, though at that age going to see any movie at the theater without parental supervision was cause for an ecstatic state.  As always with seeing a movie for the first time in 22 years, I was not sure at all how it would hold up.  Within the first five minutes all doubts were erased and I was reliving LICENSE as if still 14 years old.

Many of the decades in the 20th century had their own, distinct identity.  Certainly from the 50s on pop culture made its own stamp on each set of 10 years.  To me it cannot be argued that there was any better decade than the 80s to grow up in.  See any fashion from that time, you will know it is the 80s.  How many TV shows can you say are decade defining?  Many.  Iconic movies?  Ample.  Music?  No doubt 80s music had not just its own sound, but at least three distinct genres to choose from.

LICENSE is a pure 80s entertainment, and the type of entertainment you just cannot get from a teen movie, or movie of any kind, today.  No irony to be found in the least, sexual content there, but checked in reality, throwing up yes, but it is off camera and minimal.

I cannot say when I ha’ed as loudly as I did at a line early in the movie about mothers helping their sons hold a certain something.  You going to get a line like that in a PG-13 movie nowadays?  Hell no.  Hell, they even used the F word once!  Sweet.

The plot of the movie could not be any purer American teen – taking your parent’s car out without permission, for a wild night, risking all kinds of horrible consequences.  But you still do it anyway.

Add in a true movie dream girl in Heather Graham, with one of the best names ever written for a silver screen character, Mercedes Lane, and you know it is going to be all good times from there.

Then there is Corey Haim, recently deceased, famous for perhaps being an 80s punchline of sorts, but undeservedly so.  I actually thought his acting was good in LICENSE.  Corey Feldman was just a supporting character, but seemed to be reading his lines from his memory too much.

I cannot say how much I enjoyed revisiting LICENSE.  I am so glad I did.  All the hyperbole about a 16 year old boy getting his license in the movie, I can testify that it is all absolutely realistic.  There is no greater Freedom that can be bestowed upon any teen than receiving that license.

I believe that streak of decades with their own identity stopped in the 00s.  The first decade that saw the birth of no new musical genres.  Any song you going to hear 20 years from now that will say, ah, the sound of the 00s?  Any clothing style?  I think not.  That’s why the 00s took so much from past decades that actually had identities of their own.

LICENSE is a PG-13 rated movie, movie at its best.  Entertainment from another time.

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