On Screen

...Not, that is, until they are back in school and a very dramatic English professor (Viveca Lindfors)— a woman capable of recognizing real sparks flying—reads Gib's composition about pursuing the "sure thing" aloud in class...

...Suddenly luck intervenes...

...At other times Cusack chooses to act rather than joke, coolly withholding his humor and displaying an offhand seriousness in its place...

...If The FlamingoKidhas flaws, as it does, they are interesting flaws...

...While Brody is inculcating an intensely primitive philosophy (a version of " he who dies with the most toys wins") into his adoring proteg?, Jeffrey is enjoying the favors of his mentor's curvaceous niece Carla (Janet Jones), a Cali-fornian intrigued by his humble origins...

...to the uptight Alison until she finally proves him wrong —and gets them kicked out of the car— by baring her rear end out the window...

...A good deal is going on all the time...

...Walter "Gib" Gibson (John Cusack) is a freshman at an unnamed university featuring grassy quadrangles and tiny dorm rooms that resemble our usual images of Yale or Princeton...

...If The Flamingo Kid dissolves on a note of sentimentality—and it has been unjustly hauled over the critical coals for that sin—it is also a complex account of a young man's coming of age...

...Still, lesser creations (notably the much-touted and highly overrated Stranger than Paradise) have found unexpected markets...

...re-pressed...

...Although Gib develops a gradual, perplexed interest in Alison—she tutors him in the rudiments of grammar, and he urges greater creativity in her compositions—their libidos clearly are tied up elsewhere: She has a "goal-oriented" boyfriend, Jason(Boyd Gaines), an assiduous law school student in California, and Gib is fixated on the prospect of the "sure thing" Lance has promised him for Christmas, a date with the beach bunny on the postcard...

...Now they are stuck together, like it or not—two sparring-on-the-verge-of-melting-into-each-other hitchhikers in the Clark Gable/ Claudette Colbert tradition of It Happened One Night...

...Since happy endings are an iron rule of comedy, the picture eventually lurches its way toward one...

...Brody, a foreign car dealer, thoroughly looks the part with his twinkling pinkie ring, chain or two around the neck, and silk shirts so lustrous the light bounces off them...

...Upon awakening Gib is holding Alison, and he realizes that he has unconsciously transferred to her the role of " the sure thing...

...Here is a treat for Yuppies with soul—the Porky/Son of Porky crowd advanced a notch or two...

...Much to the disgust of wife Phyllis (Jessica Walter), Brody even invites Jeffrey to his palatial homeon"the island,'' replete with obligatory black housekeeper and remote-control TV, very exotic in those days...

...When they finally arrive in the Golden State our heroes go to meet their dates, but they do not find what they had expected...

...His high school buddy, Lance(Anthony Edwards), who has gone off to a sun-splattered West Coast campus, also sends him torturing postcards of a bikinied beauty mockingly described as " the ugliest girl in California...

...But something tells me that he won't succumb—that John Cusack is alert enough to protect his natural independence of spirit...

...And Gib refuses to make love to the photogenic stranger of his former dreams at the "Hawaiian" mixer Lance has arranged...

...On the streets of Brooklyn the kids play stickball and lounge against the stoops, hands in the pockets of their chinos...

...In a scene that might have been clammily obvious but manages to capture the essence of the businessman's allure and the plumber's integrity, the two men accidentally meet when the Willis family—including intellectual, overweight sister Ruth (Molly McCarthy), no candidate for the El Flamingo's weekly beauty contest—visits the club hoping to entice Jeffrey out to dinner...

...Jeffrey exposes Brody for the rat he is, a cheater at cards underneath his broad smiles and genial ways...

...Willis' honest-lab-or-for-honest-pay approach versus Brody's scheming, rake-it-all-in style— collide...

...I hope the Hollywood establishment doesn't grab him up and freeze-frame him, as it has Steve Martin and Chevy Chase...

...By coincidence, Gib and Alison share a ride to California during the winter school break...

...John Cusack, hardly out of adolescence, is a sure thing unto himself: His not-quite-good looks, his small, curious eyes, and his pointy nose make him infinitely endearing in a role that could well have been merely predictable...

...young adults may already feel too removed from the troubles it explores...

...My guess is that The Sure Thing will appeal most to people in their late 20s and early 30s, preternat-urally nostalgic for the days before Careers beckoned, when the only grades they had to make were literal ones...

...Directed by Garry Marshall from a screenplay he and Neal Marshall wrote, The Flamingo Kid may wisecrack a lot, yet it is also wise...

...At certain moments in this film it is clear he has decided to go all out to get laughs—when he switches voices, for example, or tries to enthrall Alison poolside by depicting a blighted future without her...

...When he goes into the bathroom she hisses at her husband that Jeffrey is probably stealing the soap—and he is...

...The quicktongued young man longs to raise his erotic experience to the level of his sexual patter, but he must be content to ogle Alison Bradbury (Daphne Zuniga), a longhaired classmate who has the rarefied mien of the princess in the princess-and-the-pea fairy tale...

...The dialogue crackles with wit (you'll find yourself quoting the best lines to any willing listener), and the performances are so good it's hard to tell where the characters begin and the actors leave off, especially in the two main roles...

...Back at the Willis' simple apartment, Jeffrey's father wants to know if he ever works and where he got a vermilion silk shirt (a gift from Brody s wardrobe...

...Brody has the wearily cynical attitude of a woman who has seen too many sudden transformations to regard any of them as authentic—"This is my life," she remarks apropos of nothing to no one, "being amused by a cabana boy...

...Yet it would be unfair, I think, to call the movie a simple morality tale with the poor, proud father winning out in theend.Thetruthis that formerly naive Jeffrey has developed a sophisticated sense of corruption and social maneuvering: Henceforth, knowledge, not ignorance, will inspire his choices, and it is hardly clear that he will grow up to be more a Willis than a Brody...

...Suffering in the back seat of the car as the driver and his wife insist on singing a medley of Broadway hits to liven up the journey, the two wary travelers join forces: Gib keeps saying "repressed...

...some of it is there to make you laugh, but some will make you think onceyou havestopped laughing...

...She watches Jeffrey like a hawk...

...The Flamingo Kid concludes on an upbeat note...

...Do the two classmates embrace and murmur sweet nothings...

...There is an intelligence to him that sets his comic gifts apart from those of many fun-ny-guys-in-the-making...

...Once again, the temptations are money and glamour, but instead of Brenda Patim-kin flicking the bottom of her bathing suit there is Phil Brody (Richard Cren-na) slaping down the winning cards at the El Flamingo's daily Big Spender's game...

...Instead, he spots Alison and her howdy-doody boyfriend across the dance floor...

...Reiner directs Cusack and Zuniga almost invisibly...

...Unlike, say, Anthony Michael Hall, whose physiognomy and deadpan style ensure his being rapidly typecast, Cusack doesn't consistently play to type even in a single performance...

...For a film that has sex and almost nothing else on its mind, The Sure Thing' s lack of pruriency is rather charmingly to its credit: Rob Reiner said he wanted to make a movie grandmothers and the ubiquitous young could enjoy, and he did...

...Two of Jeffrey's wealthier friends, Long-Island bronzed to his inner-city white, happen to know that the El Flamingo Beach Club is looking to hire a cabana boy...

...In a uniformly fine cast, Richard Crenna and Hector Elizondo are especially good: Crenna, who has struck me as better than his roles since his bit part in Wait Until Dark, creates a multidimensional character, suggesting glimpses of humanity under Brody's glitzy salesman's pitch...

...The music is be-bop—"Da Doo Ron Ron," "Run-around Sue"—and the season is summer...

...Directed by Rob Reiner, and written by Steven L. Bloom and Jonathan Roberts (co-author of The Preppie Handbook), the movie has a light touch throughout...

...Through a series mishaps that include drivers bent on molestation, sudden downpours, lost wallets and woebegone shelters, Gib andAlison bicker theirway into a truce that comes closer to romantic awareness than either of the love affairs awaiting them at the end of their trip: In an especially gentle scene, they have dinner (charged to Alison's father) at a picture-perfect inn, then carefully sleep on separate sides of the same bed...

...Less cohesive than The Sure Thing, more jarring andagood deal cruder in conception, it is nevertheless quite praiseworthy...

...The year is 1963, right before the invasion of the Beatles and the beginnings of the drop-out culture...

...Jeffrey Willis (Matt Dillon), just out of high school, is reluctantly about to take an office boy's job that his father (Hector Elizondo), a hardworking plumber, hasgottenhim...

...No doubt the El Flamingo Beach Club is merely the first of many seductions...

...If a problem exists, it is the possibility that the right audience for this movie has yet to emerge: College-age kids may find The Sure Thing too unsmarmy and fan-cy-pantsy...

...Eventually, of course, the two outlooks—Mr...

...Only the first classroom scene, in which Viveca Lindfors storms around like King Lear impersonating a college teacher, is pushed beyond its natural limits, and not a line is milked for an extra drop's worth of laughter...

...Although he doesn't "believe in tips," he takes a shine to Jeffrey and starts to help him up the ladder...

...I don't have time to work," Jeffrey obligingly explains, "I'm doing well at the club...

...After Gib'san-tics, Alison's boyfriend, with his different herbal tea for every occasion, strikes her as impossibly wimpish...

...A similar sheen of unfaked innocence graces a second recent picture, The Flamingo Kid...

...Thus commences Jeffrey's ascent—or descent—into the world of Jewish nouveaux riches, memorialized to such cutting effect in Philip Roth's novella Goodbye Columbus and in the movie based on it...

...he has the patience to let them ward off the mutual attraction they obviously feel far longer than another director might have...

...You bet your life they don't...