Legend Of Billie Jean
Not many remember this film, released in the summer of 1985 head to head against Back To The Future (and subsequently crushed as a result), but it does retain a strong cult following to this day while exhibiting themes that might be more relevant than ever. The story concerns a poor teenage girl from the Corpus Christi trailer parks named Billie Jean (Helen Slater) who is horrified when a bunch of rich kid bullies trash her brother’s (Christian Slater, NO relation) motor scooter and beat the crap out of him as a result. She goes to the rich bullies’ leader’s father (Richard Bradford) demanding that he pay for the damages to the scooter that his son and his friends incurred. He agrees in principle to pay, only for the entire episode to turn into a repugnant rape attempt, and while trying to escape, shoots the father before her and her brother and their friends go on the run, leaving the wounded rich man to claim that they had tried to rob him and figuring that no one will believe them because he’s a respectable businessman and they’re just lowly trailer trash. Billie Jean becomes an outlaw fugitive as a result, and when several stories and falsehoods start to spread about them, she cuts her hair short (ala Joan Of Arc) and makes a videotaped statement explaining her side of the story before sending it to all the news media outlets and becomes a folk hero phenomenon afterwards. Certainly the film touches on several aspects of class warfare (young vs old, rich vs poor) that still resonate to this day along with some good performances and a fine soundtrack that includes Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell and Pat Benatar’s Invincible (even though Benatar herself disowned the movie), but there is certainly something lacking in the pedestrian directing job by journeyman Matthew Robbins, who fails to bring the proper epic scope to the material that was necessary, but the script and concept continue to resonate to this day so much so that (please forgive me) an updated, modern day remake utilizing the more recent trend of social media might very well be in order. In the acting department, Helen Slater (who judging from recent photos might be more beautiful today than she was back in the 80s) is charismatic and powerful as Billie Jean Davy, making the viewer believe that she can go from a simple, ordinary girl to a larger than life figure, an outlaw who still knows the difference between right and wrong; Christian Slater as her brother is played up as an annoying punk kid, but still does a good job showing the bond he and his sister share; Keith Gordon as the quirky rich kid whose mansion they break into who decides to come along as their mock “hostage” (really because he’s running away from home himself) comes off as more likable and palatable than in his other roles of the era, especially in the way he completely understands what Billie Jean is trying to do more than even her friends do; Bradford as the ostensible villain of the piece comes off as a bit of an overly sleazy low-rent small business owner, but is still eminently hissable enough to be effective; Peter Coyote as the cop trying to do the right thing (very similar in that way to his government man in E.T.) generates sympathy as he vows to bring the affair to a peaceful conclusion; plus we have Yeardley Smith (better known to the world as Lisa Simpson) playing Billie Jean’s trailer park friend who goes along for the ride, and hearing her hurl obscenities in her distinct Lisa voice is one of the highlights of the film, and then there’s Dean Stockwell as the local district attorney (and father of Gordon’s) who vows to bring Billie Jean down even as he knows that his son might be in on it. The film noticeably starts slow in setting up the story and developing the characters, but as time goes on and the Legend grows so to speak (with teenage girls everywhere adopting the haircut and even an apparent underground network helping to keep her safe from law enforcement) the story continues to build with the help of the Benatar song until the final confrontation, a very cathartic release where it’s shown that Billie Jean did what she did not for money or fame, but because it was the right thing to stand up against someone who underestimated her greatly given her background. Overall, a movie that deserves its cult reputation and would probably be an inspiration to teenage girls today instead of Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, and all the other crap that they get spoonfed in this current era…
9/10