Joel's Rather Evil and Intimidating Parents

"Risky Business" is often mistaken for a John Hughes' 80s movie. It takes place in the same upper class suburbs of Chicago -- with side trips TO Chicago(see: Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and has scenes in a "village like" suburban business district that I swear has appeared in at least 2 Hughes films.

But John Hughes didn't write or direct it. Paul Brickman did, and he put a haunting, sexual Tangerine Dream score - dream-like in itself -- over it. And it is far more sexual a movie than Hughes ever made.

So..surface similarities, and different "depths."

Risky Business is also very much a movie about rich kids -- rich BOYS -- who call the teenage girls in the movie by their last names(rather dehumanizing them). It is also about SMART rich boys -- some of them at least -- diligently interested in getting the best grades, the best SAT scores, in the hardest classes so as to matriculate to the Ivy League(like their parents?)

About those parents: we only really see two in the film -- the two parents of Tom Cruise(as the on-the-nose named "Joel Goodson" -- Good SON.

And man are they SCARY. When they leave Joel alone in the family McMansion so they can take a trip to a sunny island without him (a scene we will see many timesi n the future -- from Home Alone to Project X, not to mention the "day off" that Ferris Bueller gets), THESE two parents rae downright terrifying in how they "lay down the law" on Joel. Don't mess with the stereo. Don't drive the Porsche. Don't have a party.

All of which, of course, Joel DOES in the typical tradition of the teen com of the 80s.

Its just that, as played by Nicholas Pryor and Janet Carroll, THESE two parents seem a notch of two above the usual "amiable dupes" who see nothing. Their pronouncements to Joel are cruel, unloving, and deeply demanding . Mom eventually doles out a Nurse Ratched killer put-down of her son: "I am very disappointed in you." Dad's face is always tense, always judgmental, always ready to back its meanness with ACTION.

I always felt that while Rebecca DeMornay's young hooker clearly came from an abusive home and ran into the clutches of "Guido the Killer Pimp" -- that Joel's family life is almost as abusive and dangerous -- just in a different way. His parents are cruel abusers in THEIR own way.

John Hughes alluded to similarly oppressive parents -- the unseen father of Ferris's neurotic friend, some of the parents we see briefly dropping off the members of "The Breakfast Club" -- but the parents of Joel Goodson are a few notches up as sadistic, inhuman, judgmental control freaks.

They are almost as dangerous to Joel as Guido the Killer Pimp -- and they join Guido in raising the stakes for digression in Risky Business. The climax finds Joel between the rock of Guido's "buy back" negotiation and the imminent return of the parents to the house from their trip.

One wonders -- particularly with a hooker as a girlfriend(if only for awhile) -- if Joel will ever escape those parents.