Say what you will about the 80's, but one thing will always be true-- it was the decade in which the Teen Comedy was raised to a low art form. While most people instantly think of all those insipid John Hughes movies and the endless procession of just plain awful bikini/beach/spring break movies, it's important to realize that there were some fairly decent movies released in the genre.

While lots of my friends easily recall standouts like "The Sure Thing" and "Risky Business"-- films which possessed sufficient intelligence and humor to elevate themselves above the dreck-- one of my absolute favorite movies from the 1980's (or any period, for that matter) still seems to escape widespread notice or remembrance.

I'm talking about "Fandango."

Back in the 80's I was in my early twenties and bumbling rather aimlessly through a lackluster decade of "higher learning." I had no clear idea of what I was working towards or what I wanted to be (and still don't, if that's of any interest to anyone out there), and I wasn't really paying a whole lot of attention to the scenery as the decade lazily drifted by. Somewhere along the way I was spending another of those thrilling nights parked on a sofa flipping through the cable alphabet when I stumbled across a strange scene-- I saw Judd Nelson with a short sensible haircut, standing in a desert, arguing with a tuxedo-clad Kevin Costner.

Now, at this particular stage of the 80's, I already knew who Judd Nelson and Kevin Costner were-- movies like "The Breakfast Club" and "St. Elmo's Fire" had turned Nelson into the brooding flavor of the month for most females I knew, while Costner was familiar from near-constant cable replays of both "Silverado" and "American Flyers."

But this was something completely unfamiliar and unknown. I fumbled for the program guide and found "Fandango (1985)." I'd never heard of this movie, nor had I heard any of my friends mention it before. I sat there amused for a second, assuming that it had to be some forgotten movie from earlier in their careers, now dragged back out to capitalize on Nelson's and Costener's mid-80's "stardom." I was ready-- expecting, even-- to laugh at the movie. Surely there was a reason it had escaped notice by any of my friends.

(To appreciate my lack of familiarity with the movie, it's important to understand just how many movies I was seeing at the time-- at one point in this period my friends and I went to three different multiplexes one Saturday night and were unable to find ONE movie that we'd not already seen.)

But instead of being amused as expected by the "awfulness" of some forgotten hack movie from early in their careers, I quickly found myself caught up in the dynamics of the relationships in the movie. I sat there and watched the final hour completely absorbed. When the final scene faded and the end credits started to roll, I was almost shaking. "That was really awesome," I distinctly remember mumbling aloud to myself. I fumbled back through the program guide to see when this movie was going to be repeated. I ended up setting my alarm clock to wake at 2:30 in the morning the next night just to be able to watch the complete movie start to finish.

And to this day it remains one of my favorite and most-quoted movies.

So what's it all about? Well, in simple terms, "Fandango" tells the story of a group of friends out on one last crazy road trip before their graduation from the University of Texas in 1972. Costner, Nelson, and Sam Robards play fraternity brothers who, along with another pair of buddies, disappear from a graduation night beer bash to head off across the wilds of West Texas to make good on some strange never-fully-revealed pact they all made together as freshmen. Somewhere along the way, we learn that each of the guys riding in the big beat up Cadillac have their own monsters waiting for them out in The Real World looming just days away. With the Draft eating up young men and spitting them out by the mouthful into Vietnam, the issue of service to country looms large in the minds of the guys. Costner's seemingly care-free "Gardner Barnes" character pushes hard for the Canada option, while Nelson's ROTC-darling "Phil Hicks" sings the counter-balancing "duty-honor-country" refrain hammered home both by his parents and ROTC compatriots. Caught between these opposing voices is Kenneth Waggoner (Sam Robards, son of stage legend Jason), an otherwise seemingly decent guy who'd much prefer they both "just shut the hell up" so that he might figure out how best to salvage a relationship with a fiancee he left standing at the altar when he ran off for this last drunken weekend with his buddies.

Each of the three major characters has managed to skate through college while avoiding direct confrontation with their personal demons, but during this last wild dance before adulthood, they each eventually run out of places to hide or run to, and they each end up having to face up to that which they've avoided. Along the way their mutual friendship is pushed and twisted and tested as never before. There are several scenes in which the tension mounts until it seems a physical confrontation is simply inevitable, but in every case, something unexpected happens along to forestall the sad sight of close friends destroying the best friendships they will ever know.

I don't want to spoil any of the movie's brilliant set pieces-- and there are more than one-- but I will say that things end pretty much as they really might in a similar real world situation. Some people "win," others "lose," and we're left wondering if these guys will be able to hold onto their relationships to one another in the years following the story onscreen.

What makes "Fandango" so special is the interplay between Nelson, Costner, and Robards, plus the work of writer/director Kevin Reynolds. Reynolds grew up in Texas, so his feel for the state, its attitudes and its general "vibe" are dead-on accurate. I've read that many of the incidents and characters depicted in this movie are lifted right out of his own collegiate experiences at Baylor University in the early 70's. As the story goes, Reynolds graduated from Baylor and went on to law school, but the film making bug sent him packing for Hollywood and the USC Film School. There he made a graduate film called "Jump" that would later become the basis for the central set piece in "Fandango." During this same period Reynolds befriended then-unknown struggling actor Kevin Costner. When Steven Spielberg happened to see Reynold's "Jump" graduate film, he offered to finance a long-form theatrical version, Costner agreed to star in buddy Reynolds's movie, and "Fandango" came into being.

Like his hero/patron Spielberg, Reynolds shows a definite eye for a cool visual-- I can't help but recall certain shots and scenes whenever I start thinking about this movie: Robards "surfing" on the roof of the Caddy as it barrels down a deserted West Texas highway... a friendly midnight fireworks fight in a small-town graveyard... sunrise through the crumbling remains of the set for the movie "Giant" out in Marfa, Texas... a toast "to what we were... and what we'll be" offered deep in the rugged Big Bend region of Texas, overlooking the Rio Grande far below... a wonderfully dreamlike dance sequence beneath a canopy of Christmas lights... all of it combines to help tell a tale of unique people in a unique time and place, making the story seem infinitely more heartfelt and "real" than the normal Hollywood teen fluff.

Of course, that's the irony-- this movie was released and marketed as a silly lightweight teen comedy, when it fact it is a very serious look at the difficult transition between carefree collegiate days and the soul-chewing problems of adult life. In that way it's somewhat similar to Rob Reiner's sinfully under-appreciated film of roughly the same era, "The Sure Thing." Both movies are less about teenagers or college kids than they are about young people taking their first halting steps into the world of mature adult feelings and relationships.

I happened to catch this movie at a point in my own life where I was starting to encounter and experience many of the same fears and pressures felt by the guys in "Fandango." Without intending to make it sound overly dramatic, this movie helped to open my eyes to the rarity and fragility of those true abiding friendships made in your college years. Just as the guys in "Fandango" discover, I was starting to realize that the wonderful dream of carefree college life is an illusion, and a temporary and fleeting one at that. You'd best savor every wonderfully stupid absurd pointless humiliating delicious moment, because one day you'll look up to realize that it's over. It's just over. And there's nothing you can do to get it back.

Is this a "great" movie? Hardly-- some of the subplots feel a bit tacked on, some of major action sequences go on a bit longer than they ought to for best effect, and most people will likely not be as surprised by the film's "surprise" revelations as Reynolds likely intended or expected, but there is just so much "good" stuff going on for the most part that I'm more than willing to excuse all these minor miscues. As Gardner Barnes (Costner) says, "Here's to privileges of youth." Sometimes sincerity is enough to pull you through, and there's a sincere romantic sweetness running through this movie that makes me almost eager to look the other way whenever Reynolds stumbles momentarily for a step or two. If anything, this coltish clumsiness adds to the overall charm of the movie, since it's obvious we are not watching the work of some worldly experienced director decades removed from the action being depicted. Everything in the movie just feels right-- down to the great soundtrack of early 70's music-- and the interplay between the three principles is almost perfect. I can't recall ever liking Nelson OR Costner more than I do in this movie.

At the end of the day, "Fandango" might not realistically depict the experiences of every person who ever went off to college, but in many ways I think it depicts what most of us WISH we'd experienced-- some defining moment we could look back on when we knew enough to stop, raise a glass with friends, and smile at both the familiar road trailing away behind us as well as the strange new one stretching out before us.

Carpe diem, darlin'. Carpe diem.

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(Interesting trivia-- years later Costner would repay Reynolds's early confidence in his acting by tapping his pal to direct "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." The two enjoyed that working relationship so well that they teamed up again for a little movie called "Waterworld." Difficulties on that shoot proved so severe that Reynolds stepped down from the director's chair during final production, leaving an unhappy Costner to finish the project and very nearly ending their decades-long friendship.)

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Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older