This is it. I am hitting the big 3-0 today. I thought in honor of that I'd review a film based on the day, but instead of the new 2008 film with the same name, I figured I'd go with this one from 1986, when I was seven, and I couldn't wait to be thirty. What a moron I was back then. Well, maybe. The seven-year-old me wasn't allowed to eat a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups for supper, but the thirty-year-old one can!
April Fools Day has a bunch of kids going out to a rich friend of theirs' island mansion on some lake somewhere. They just happen to go on the first of April, and the classic range of pranks ensue. But then they turn deadly! Dun-dun-daaaaah! Will these 80s kids with their feathered hair and ripped sweatshirts and preppy polos survive?
This wasn't too bad. The ending was a little contrived, but what do you expect. As far as the teen stuck in a remote area getting picked off one by one genre goes, it's okay. My standards are Friday the Thirteenth parts IV, VI, and VII (especially VII), and also Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. This movie isn't at that level, but it's way better than its modern equivalents, like See No Evil.
Big name alert. We got Biff from Back to the Future. I couldn't believe it when I saw him. This came out one year after he made that, so who knows timing wise which he made first. For the most part now he does parts on prime time broadcast dramas, like CSI and whatnot. I think that's pretty respectable.
We also have actors from two of my personal 80s faves: Just One of the Guys and Summer School. From the first, we have the best friend slash love interest of the girl pretending to be a guy. His famous line came after the girl that everyone thought was a guy kissed him at a big dance: "It's okay, she's got tits". From the second we have the guy who played Larry. I'll take that because I had no choice, but if I did have a choice I'd take Chainsaw, the same guy who played Dave Marshak in the Ski Schools.
I didn't know there was a new April Fools Day that came out in 2008 until I looked this one up as I was typing the review. I don't really know what to do about that, I mean it's a DTV film, and it's out there, but the charm of reviewing it on April Fools Day is gone now. I guess I'll have to wait until next year, when I'm 31. Ugh!
People always ask me what it's like to have my birthday on April Fools. One of the big things is that people are always gunning for me. Who better to play a prank on than an April Fools Baby, right? That got old, of course, when I started taking my birthday off from school, not because of the pranks, but because I felt birthdays were too cool a thing to be wasted at such a shitty place as school. No one should have to go to school on his or her birthday. Anyway, it's kind of a cool novelty to have a birthday on a day like that, and it kind of fits my personality, so I wouldn't trade it for another birthday.
This movie's just kind of there. It probably wouldn't have even made the site if I was born on a different day. I'm not sure if that's its loss or gain, because I'm not exactly recommending it either. It just kind of is. I guess you could rent it and get a kick out of the 80s-ness of it, if anything else.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090655/
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