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Say Anything Movie Review

Say Anything is a 1989 romantic comedy film directed by Cameron Crowe and starring John Cusack and Ione Skye. It is such a boring, weak movie.

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“Nobody thinks it will work, do they?“

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A noble underachiever and a beautiful valedictorian fall in love the summer before she goes off to college. First and foremost, I do not care for Cameron Crowe movies. His films are simply not for me. I did not like ‘Jerry Maguire’ at all and I did not care for this movie either, though it’s at least slightly better than that cringe fest.

This movie stars John Cusack and this guy simply does nothing for me. In fact, I find him to be very annoying in his off-putting high confidence and charisma. He’s not charming at all and is instead rather unlikable. Thus, this film could never make me care for its protagonist as I do not like the actor himself. Ione Skye was definitely much more charming and it’s interesting how this actress basically never had any other big movie after this one.

The film includes an entire subplot with the father that is totally ancillary to the overall storyline and rather unnecessary as a result. John Mahoney did the best that he could, but the role was simply not great. A couple of father-daughter scenes worked for me, though, and they were much more moving than the romantic scenes.

Say Anything is famous for that iconic scene where he plays a song for her in front of her house. It channels Romeo and Juliet obviously and it definitely is memorable, but it still remains a cringe-worthy, overly cheesy scene in a film that is entirely devoid of any realism or sophistication.

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This guy could never be with this particular girl who is leagues above him, so it’s that typical Hollywood make-believe that by this point feels dated. The movie is well made technically speaking, very well acted and featuring a strong soundtrack, but it also never engaged me and it ended up being a chore to sit through.