Ten days ago I re-posted a generic HE viewpoint…my longstanding praise of Paul Brickman‘s Risky Business (’83)…basically a statement that this was far more than a teenaged horndog comedy but å social satire of the slyest, dryest and most on-target kind.
Risky Business was hugely enjoyable (“Who’s the U-boat commander?” is one of the funniest lines ever spoken by an actor whom no one had heard of back then and who still draws a blank) and yet the butt of the humor was obvious and consistent…the whole thing was aimed squarely at the unfolding early ’80s zeitgiest and louche wealthy-guy opportunism in particular…a congregation of social forces that indicated we were all starting to ease up and hang back and say “what the fuck?” more and more…swirling downwards into greed and effete whateverism.
Critic Emmanuel Levy, who’s been around forever, said precisely the same thing:
But I was astonished to discover last night that David Denby, one of my all-time favorite critics who was with New York magazine for many years before moving over to The New Yorker…I was astonished to read Denby’s 8.22.83 review and realize that he missed Risky Business almost entirely. Denby obviously saw it, but it went right around him or through him or over him. He allowed that Brickman has some talent but basically panned the film, calling it “corrupt” and “a clear failure.”
A clear failure? It’s one of the smartest, funniest, most perfectly realized, on-point social satire-slash-sex comedies ever made…it’s right up there with The Apartment and The Graduate…it simultaneously understands and chortles in a resigned, low-key way at upper-middle-class entitlement, and with the cynical knowingness of a Reagan-era Oscar Wilde.
Another of my favorite cinematic soothsayers back then, N.Y. Times critic Janet Maslin, also missed it…mind-blowing. Christian Science Monitor critic David Sterritt dismissed it also.
Roger Ebert, however, got it….good for him.
Criterion’s Risky Business 4K pops on 7.23.24.
