Red Dawn (1984)

  Until last night, I had never seen the original Red Dawn.  I knew it existed and I knew they were remaking it but these facts really meant nothing to me.  It apparently means a great deal to Christy, however, since she can't stop herself from hissing at the screen every time she sees the trailer for the remake.  In order to sway me to her side, this was her pick for our nightly round robin of movies. 

Having only heard about it second hand, I was shocked to learn it wasn't a comedy.  Seriously, I thought it was supposed to be Home Alone but with a town instead of a house.  So, reading the opening crawl about how the USSR has suffered a severe wheat shortage, NATO has fallen apart, and all these other Cold War horrors I had to hit the pause button and ask my cousin when it was supposed to get funny.  Her response:  "It doesn't.  It's a drama, not a comedy." 

I was floored.  Seriously, how can you hear the plot and not think this is a wacky slapstick farce?  'Colorado teens retreat to the mountains and engage in guerilla warfare against Russian and Cuban invaders'.  That is hilarious on paper.  In practice, decidedly less so.

Jed (Patrick Swayze) is the leader of a group of teens who flee to the Rockies after their town is invaded by a Russo-Cuban coalition.  After a month, they return to town for news and find that the invasion has become an occupation.  The adults identified as troublemakers, by handy court records of firearm registration, are kept in re-education camps and the rest of the citizens are meekly submitting to the iron boot on their necks.  The kids decide to defend their country by staging guerilla attacks and spraypainting the high school mascot "Wolverines" on their targets. 

This plays like a who's-who of young stars with Charlie Sheen, Powers Boothe, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, and Harry Dean Stanton making up the cast.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time here detailing all the ways this movie was ludicrous in premise because it's nothing but 80's fearmongering set to celluloid.  I will say that I think the remake is missing a golden opportunity to turn this into a campy teen comedy, though.