Reviews : A Night in the life of Jimmy Reardon

19?? Motion Picture Guide Annual

Unjustly ignored by the vast majority of the critics and public, who dismissed it as just another teenage sex comedy, A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON is yet another interesting film from writer-director William Richert (WINTER KILLS; THE AMERICAN SUCCESS CO.) whose sparse but brilliant output has doomed him to relative obscurity. Based on an autobiographical novel Richert wrote at age 19, the film is set circa 1962 in Evanston, a wealthy suburb north of Chicago, and follows 17-year-old Jimmy Reardon (Phoenix), a disarmingly shifty lad who fancies himself a romantic and beat poet, as he desperately tries to make some sense of life in his last summer before college. Under great pressure to attend his stern, working-class father's (Koslo) alma mater, a local all-boys business school, Phoenix has his own ideas and tries to scam a way to visit Hawaii with beautiful young socialite Salenger. Phoenix is obsessed with the girl and considers her his one true love, mainly because he hasn't gotten past the second base with her. To raise money, the teenage lothario taps all the women he knows, including his sister; the eccentric, elderly mother of his boss; and his mother. Having scraped all the necessary funds, Phoenix types out a farewell note to his parents, but is interrupted as his mother introduces her friend Magnuson, an attractive divorcee whom his father despises. Told to drive Magnuson home in his father's beloved car, Phoenix winds up being seduced by the older woman. This escapade causes him to be late for a country club dance to which he was supposed to take Salenger, and he finds that she has gone without him, accompanied by Court, an upper-class BMOC of whom her parents approve. Phoenix crashes the swank party and spirits Salenger away from her date. She confesses that she has finally decided to lose her virginity to Phoenix, but he is unable to comply (because he just made love to Magnuson) and she storms back to the dance without him.

Hooking up with another female friend, the incredibly wealthy and sardonic Middleberg, Phoenix learns that Court, who also fancies himself a poet, has deflowered most of the girls in their graduating class. Making a last-ditch attempt to steal Salenger back, Phoenix returns to the party and follows Court's reading of pretentious doggerel with a deliberately scandalous poem that angrily mocks the ruling-class crowd. Humiliated, Salenger leaves the party with Court, Phoenix gives chase, and, in a confrontation, the much larger Court beats Phoenix to a pulp and leaves him lying in the road. The depressed and frustrated Phoenix then drives his father's car into downtown Chicago and accidentally crashes it into an El Platform. With no one to turn to, Phoenix phones Magnuson for help and realizes that his father is also having an affair with her. He then phones his dad and lets it be known that he is aware of the tryst. This little secret successfully placates his father, who comes downtown to pick Phoenix up. When father and son come face to face, a new understanding between them develops and they ride back home on the elevated together in silence, with Phoenix vowing to try and please his father more often -maybe. A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON is a film with much more on its mind that the juvenile prank and drooling titillation found in the youth-oriented epics with which it has been compared. Basing his film on his novel Aren't you ever gonna kiss me goodbye? writer-director Richert seems to have resisted the temptation to impose a more adult perspective on material that he wrote when still a teen. Richert does a fine job capturing the alienation, confusion, and desperation that can follow high school, as well as the very real class distinctions that begin to define students' future - with some bound for Harvard, others for community college - upon their graduation from a public school where the children of the wealthy and the working class intermingle. Richert also continues to explore adversarial father-son relationships, a theme which has marked his other work, and, since the material is autobiographical, it may be assumed that this film indicates how the seeds of his obsession were sown.

Set in a diverse community where the very rich reside alongside the lower middle class and poor, JIMMY REARDON vividly conveys the class struggle between status seekers like Phoenix's character's father and the old-money rich, who really have nothing but contempt for his type. Phoenix realizes that no matter how hard his father works, he will never be accepted by the social elite (Middleberg even remarks to Phoenix's rich friend Perry that the former's family will never be accepted because they haven't lived in Evanston for three generations), but Phoenix himself attempts to insinuate himself into their world by seducing daughters of wealth. Unfortunately, he doesn't see until the end of the film that the girls treat him like the kitchen help, and will use him to satiate desires unfulfilled by their spineless men (such as Perry) but never really accept him as an equal. This realization finally dawns on Phoenix when he is given the chance to capture his obsession - Salenger's virginity - and can't perform. He always thought that he was using women, when, in reality, the opposite was true. This dawning of self-awareness is reenforced when Phoenix learns of his father's affaire and finally begins to understand that his father hides his vulnerabilities behind a jumble of resentment, frustration and rage. In the end both father and son realize how similar they are - not because they have slept with the same woman, but because they, as Richert puts it in his notes on the film, "are subject to the same limitations and desires". Through the disastrous events of 36 hours, both Phoenix and his father realize that they are not alone, not outsiders, for they are cut from the same mold, are blood, and have each other. Although Phoenix's character winds up with nothing at the end, Richert doesn't show it as a defeat. On the contrary, he seems to endorse the fight, not for acceptance by the rich, but for carving out your own niche. By finally accepting who he is and moving forward with that knowledge, Phoenix can heed the words he reads on a billboard : "Nothing is beyond you".

As in THE AMERICAN SUCCESS CO. and WINTER KILLS, Richert is able to combine his superior narrative sense with solid visuals and good direction of actors. River Phoenix is quite good as Jimmy Reardon, although some have complained that the character is self-centered and unlikable. When one considers that the film is highly personal, told from a teenager's perspective, and concerns a search for identity, however, it must be conceded that the character cannot appear to be anything but self-absorbed. It is to young Phoenix's credit that he nonetheless makes Jimmy sufficiently compelling and sympathetic, rather than succumbing to the self-satisfied smugness of Matthew Broderick in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF. Paul Koslo, as Jimmy's father, is marvelous, a barely suppressed bundle of frustration trying to claw his way to the top while hiding his deepest feelings from his family. The climactic scene between father and son - almost entirely without dialog - is skillfully played and wonderfully nuanced. Also excellent is Ann Magnuson as the woman who undergoes a quiet moral dilemma before deciding to sleep with much younger Phoenix., while Louanne, as Jimmy's sardonic rich friend Suzie Middleberg, almost steals the film. There is one weak link in the cast, however, namely Meredith Salenger as Lisa. A competent actress, Salenger just doesn't quite ring true as the confused socialite torn between her physical attraction to Phoenix and the realities of her upbringing. Her line readings seem somewhat vague and are not quite convincing.

All of Richert's film have been concerned about American wealth, status, and power, and A NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY REARDON is no exception. As with most successful semiautbiographical works, it also provides a fascinating glimpse into what created the artist's perspective, and - as is the case with all of Richert's films - it deserves to find an audience.