| Can't Buy Me Love | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Steve Rash |
| Produced by | Thom Mount |
| Written by | Michael Swerdlick |
| Starring | Patrick Dempsey Amanda Peterson Courtney Gains Tina Caspary Seth Green |
| Music by | Robert Folk |
| Cinematography | Peter Lyons Collister |
| Editing by | Jeff Gourson |
| Studio | Apollo Pictures Silver Screen Partners III The Mount Company |
| Distributed by | Touchstone Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 14, 1987 |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $31,623,833 |
Can't Buy Me Love is a 1987 teen comedy feature film starring Patrick Dempsey and Amanda Peterson in a story about a nerd at a high school in Tucson, Arizona who gives a cheerleader $1,000 to pretend to be his girlfriend for a month. The film was directed by Steve Rash.[1]
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Ronald Miller (Dempsey) is a typical high school nerd. He spent all summer mowing lawns, to save up for a telescope. However, at an opportune moment, he makes a deal with popular cheerleader Cynthia "Cindy" Mancini (Peterson) to "rent" her for $1,000. She agrees so that she can afford to replace a suede outfit that Quint, a baseball jock, spilled red wine on while wearing at a party. The outfit belonged to her mother and Cindy hadn't received permission to borrow it. Having few options, except telling her mom the truth, Cindy reluctantly agrees to help him look "cool" by pretending to be his girlfriend for a month, even though she already has a boyfriend named Bobby, who is away at college. Both agree never to reveal the pact.
Ronald then trades his nerdy-but-loyal friends for the shallow popular students and undergoes a complete clothing and hair makeover at Cindy's direction. Over the month, the two discover each other's individuality and are drawn closely together. Cindy soon starts to genuinely like Ronald. She gets to know him better as he opens up to her with his beliefs about astronomy, and how when he's his "dad's age, people will be working there and living there...maybe even us.", talking of the moon while looking at Cindy. She opens up to him as he washes her car at her house. She goes inside to get a poem that she'd written that meant the world to her, and lets Ronnie read it. It was a special moment for the two of them. When the month has ended, Ronald and Cindy dramatically "break up" in front of a crowd at school, as an act to solidify peoples' beliefs that they actually were a couple. Later, Cindy becomes jealous when she sees him going out with her girlfriends Barbara and Patty.
Ronald continues playing "cool" by hanging out with the jocks and hot chicks. At a New Year's Eve party, Ronald gets pretty drunk, goes into the bathroom with a girl and has sex with her. Cindy walks by and hears Ronald reciting the very poem that she (Cindy) had written, to this girl. She's completely devastated, so she starts drinking heavily. As a surprise, Bobby shows up at the party from the University of Iowa, as he still has strong ties with most of the athletes. After he learns about her relationship with Ronald through a few of the athletes, Cindy is brutally dumped in front of a lot of people. In anger and frustration, Cindy tells the party-goers the truth about her relationship with Ronald and his "cool" pretenses. She scolds her friends for falling for his act, and for being "a bunch of followers".
"Our little plan worked, didn't it, Ronald?" Cindy says as she effectively puts Ronald back at square one with not only the popular crowd (who now are back to teasing him and throwing food at him), but the nerdy crowd as well. Ronald suffers much emotional distress at being socially ostracized, especially after a transfer girl (Corissa Miller) walks up to him and remarks, in front of a lot of people during lunch that he took economics, and that he could've had her for $49.95.
However, a moment comes to redeem himself when he defends his best friend Kenneth against the onslaught of Quint (Cort McCown). Ronald points out that they were all friends at one time. Quint had fallen out of their tree-house and broke his arm when they were 9. They carried him 12 blocks to the hospital as he cried all the way. Now they are divided into cliques.
Cindy recognizes Ronald's worth after that, and the two reconcile when Cindy opts to hop on the back of Ronald's riding lawn mower instead of hanging out with her popular friends. The two share a kiss as the title song plays and closing credits roll, while the two of them ride off into the sunset...on a lawnmower.
The film was shot on location in Tucson, Arizona, at Tucson High Magnet School (then known as Tucson High School). The choreography is by Paula Abdul, who makes an uncredited appearance as a dancer. When the filmmakers decided to make this a non-union shoot, the Screen Actor's Guild protested the filming, going so far as to send representatives to the school to discourage students from appearing on camera. Because of this, none of the school's drama students chose to appear as extras in the film.
Caryn James in the New York Times wrote that the film missed its mark and traded its potential originality for a bid at popularity by writing, "Michael Swerdlick, the writer, and Steve Rash, the director...waste a chance to make the much deeper, funnier movie that strains to break through. [The film]...has an identity crisis that's a mirror-image of Ronald's own. He thinks he wants popularity at any price, though he's really a sincere guy. The film thinks it wants to be sincere, when all it truly wants is to be popular, just like the other kids' movies, so it sells off its originality."[2]
The film ranked number 41 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies in 2006.[3][4]
In 2003, Can't Buy Me Love was remade as Love Don't Cost a Thing starring Nick Cannon and Christina Milian.[5]
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