Something Wild

Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) is outwardly a stuffy businessman in NYC. He tries to dine and dash, but gets called out by Lulu/Audrey Hankel (Melanie Griffith). She sees him as a secret rebel. She offers to drive him back to his office but instead takes him on a wild trip. She's stealing and sleeping with the married Charles in a motel. She brings him back to visit her mother and go to the class reunion as Charles' wife. Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta) and his girlfriend Irene (Margaret Colin) show up at the reunion and take Charles and Audrey for a drive. Ray turns out to be Audrey's ex-con husband and he holds up a convenience store.

Melanie Griffith delivers one of the most memorable character in cinema. She's a Manic Pixie Dream Girl before that term existed. She's also more three dimensional than that. Jeff Daniels is almost as good and shows his versatility. My main problem with him is the first half where he is supposedly a married man cheating on his loving wife. Instead of a compelling reveal later on, I would have started with Charles as a lonely non-married guy. It kept me from liking Charles and thinking that he's a lousy cheater. Ray Liotta is always great as a crazed maniac. It's a wild times.

I truly love this movie when I need to totally vanish from real life for a couple of hours. I wholeheartedly agree with the comments about how it goes from fun to serious almost seamlessly, but one part has been overlooked. The visit to Audrey's mother, Peaches, is almost abrupt in its quietude ("Don't call me Lulu, call me Audrey" changes everything), and it makes you wonder how Audrey became as free-spirited as she is. Peaches is no dummy, either... she reads right through Charlie with an air of a woman resigned to never really knowing her daughter. This little visit is the bridge between the fun and scary, the surreal and frighteningly real, and asks more questions than it answers... which works perfectly.

Not even remotely corny like one would expect of a 1980s romantic comedy, this fierce, libidinous entertainment stars Jeff Daniels as Charlie, an externally button-down banker whose mojo is readily fluttered by audacity in women, and Melanie Griffith as Lulu, an alcoholic sex machine with an amply fertile mind. Daniels plays some of the same notes here that he used in Terms of Endearment, where he was the firm, competent, straitlaced husband and father who liked to have relations with perky coeds. He looks like he was born to wear a suit and a tie, but he has that insubordinate glint in the right light. Griffith's performance is founded not so much on sexual excitement as on nerve: She is able to persuade us, and Daniels, that she is likely to do almost anything, particularly if she thinks it might shock him.

Even while they're standing on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and she's making like she's charging him with theft, there's a spark between them. The casting is critical in a movie like this. There has to be some kind of brutish cohesion between the man and the woman or it doesn't make any difference how sharp the dialogue is. Once they've made their connection, Daniels freely goes along for the ride. After awhile she even takes his handcuffs off, although he sort of liked the idea of having lunch in a restaurant with the cuffs dangling from one of his wrists.

They drive down the East Coast from New York to Tallahasee, while she steals money from cash registers and he capsizes into the conscious daydream of the sensually exhausted. At Griffith's high school reunion, Daniels runs into the last person he wants to see, the accountant from his office. And Griffith runs into the last person she wants to see, her husband, Ray Liotta. I will stop here. The uncertainty of the tension must not be ruined.

If Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye had developed this movie as a madcap comedy, it most likely wouldn't have worked as well. Their feat is to think their characters through before the very first scene. They know all about Charlie and Lulu, and so what happens after the confrontation outside that restaurant is virtually inescapable, cnsidering who they are and how they look at each other. This is one of those few movies where the story acts shocked by what the characters do, and not the other way around.

Stiff and strait banker Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) meets sexy wild gal Audrey Hankel (Melanie Griffith) and quickly falls under her spell. Initially, and weakly protesting, he soon finds that her lifestyle adds the spark to his otherwise dull existence. However, things get troublesome when her violent ex-convict husband (Ray Liotta) shows up and announces that if he can't have her? Nobody can!

Something of a cult hit these days, Something Wild (directed by Jonathan "Silence Of The Lambs" Demme) has that nice trick of being able to pull us in early for the comedy, and then take us down a darker, but still comical, road. Daniels is always an affable and easy to watch actor, and nothing changes here, but it's Griffith and an early Liotta turn that steals the show. Griffith is a ball of sexuality, and she looks fabulous into the bargain. Her Audrey (AKA Lulu) has a few layers that need to be peeled by Griffith and she does it with style. Liotta serves notice of what was to come four years down the line when a certain Mr Scorsese came calling. Menacing yet fun into the bargain, it's very much the perfect Liotta role. Demme paints an interesting picture as he blends yuppiedom with rebellious excess, the result being a quirky little number that, save for an inevitability that comes with the finale, is a rewarding, time fulfilling experience. Margaret Colin, Tracey Walter, Su Tissue and Charles Napier join the principals in the cast, while the zippy 80s soundtrack contains cuts from some of the decades luminaries like New Order, Fine Young Cannibals & UB40. 7/10

Jeff Daniels has never been better, Ray Liotta is wonderfully sexy and menacing, and even Melanie Griffith (whom I normally dislike) works well here. One of my favorite Demme movies, this one features all kinds of interesting little character bits (a Demme trademark), and a cool little detail that I only noticed upon my 3rd or 4th viewing: at the high school reunion, after Charlie and Audrey finish their sweet little dance, the lights flicker and black out for a moment, signaling the end of the first, lighter half of the film. Ray Liotta appears on screen seconds later, bringing with him the all the violence and danger of the second half.

A very simple but elegant touch. Check this one out, it's a really good movie. Great soundtrack too! 8/10.