Arquette and Spano hit exactly the right note.
Baby It's You (1983)
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Synopsis: Like GREASE without the song and dance, BABY IT'S YOU is a coming-of-age story about two mismatched lovers--Jill (Rosanna Arquette), a popular Jewish student about to go to college, and Sheik (Vincent Spano), an Italian trashman's son nicknamed after a condom brand. Beginning with the... Like GREASE without the song and dance, BABY IT'S YOU is a coming-of-age story about two mismatched lovers--Jill (Rosanna Arquette), a popular Jewish student about to go to college, and Sheik (Vincent Spano), an Italian trashman's son nicknamed after a condom brand. Beginning with the characters' love affair in a New Jersey high school in the 1960s, the film doesn't stop at senior prom night; instead, the film follows their complicated relationship as Jill goes to a woman's college and Sheik attempts to make it as a singer in Florida. The film, which director John Sayles considers one of his most autobiographical, was the first picture he made with financing from a major studio. After viewing Sayles's cut of the film, Paramount wanted to reedit the film to focus only on the characters' romance in high school. Sayles threatened to take his name off the project, and after the studio cut of the film did not test better with focus groups, his version of the film prevailed. Featuring Arquette in her first starring role, BABY IT'S YOU is an unsentimental look at one cross-class relationship. [More]
Genre: Comedies
Starring: Rosanna Arquette, Vincent Spano, Tracy Pollan, Robert Downey, Fisher Stevens
Reviews
John Sayles takes on a genre movie and makes something that ends up as distinctive as his trademark ensemble films.
Sayles's class-consciousness is telling as always, and the director is so good at creating complex, persuasive characters that one is tempted to overlook narrative weaknesses, especially in the final third of the film.
As a filmmaker, Sayles still seems more likable than incisive or original, but it's a likability with a certain brilliance.
One of John Sayles' lesser films, but Arquette and Spano are good, and Sayles manages to make an "opposites attract" story that doesn't seem stale.
Arquette, still green under the gills when this flick was made, doesn’t light up the screen. Neither does Spano, despite being dubbed one of the “12 most promising young actors of 1983”.
A peculiarly absorbing and sticky film, Baby, It's You is all the more so for its relative uniqueness in Sayles' oeuvre.


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