OVER THE EDGE (83)

Directed by: Jonathan Kaplan (1979)

Starring: Michael Kramer, Matt Dillon, Vincent Spano

The Pitch: In a "planned community" that forgot to plan for kids, bored teens get high, get frustrated and get into trouble.

Theo Sez: Maybe it's just an accident of birth (mine, not the film's) that makes this seem so astonishingly honest - certainly, the image of bored 13-year-olds hanging out while the Cars sing "Just What I Needed" on the soundtrack resonates with this viewer in a way it presumably doesn't for those older or younger. It's halfway between REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE and RIVER'S EDGE (co-written by EDGE director Tim Hunter), not trying to offer explanations like the former but not nihilistic like the latter either : the middle-class teens it depicts are troubled simply because they're bored - but not terminally bored. This is not a collapsed society, just a mismanaged one, and it's not impossible that the kids' parents (who are generally sympathetic, but too caught up in their own problems) will eventually be able to help them. It makes the film more human, as well as somehow - because our heroes are closer to ordinary teens, less the alienated monsters of KIDS or RIVER'S EDGE - more disturbing, especially at the climax when the kids take over, locking the adults in the school hall and going on a rampage of car-burning and mass destruction : it may be the only instance in this whole troubled-teen genre where the heroes lose that sheen of victimisation that keeps them spotless and undefiled - where they take the upper hand and make it clear they stand not for a Better World of tolerance and compassion but for pure, cathartic anarchy. In fact, given that the film's sympathies lie solidly with its heroes, maybe the giddy ambivalence of this climax - the way it shows you a dark abyss opening up but makes you feel like dancing on the cliff-edge - is unintentional : maybe all it intended was a rip-roaring, smash-'em-up ending in the punk-rock spirit of the age, instead of the unforgettable Walpurgisnacht it actually delivers. The whole film feels like a happy accident, a low-budget quasi-exploitation indie that somehow got it right ; now if only I could be sure that I'm behaving like a film critic, and not just showing my age...