Pump Up the Volume

This is an exhilarating picture, the kind that strips away smug complacencies and exposes raw nerves to a bright light. [14 Sep 1990, p.C4]

Unlike "Heathers," a satiric treatment of teen suicide, Pump Up the Volume is passionately caring. It's a howl from the heart, a relentlessly involving movie that gives a kid every reason to believe that he or she can come of age. It appreciates the pimples and pitfalls of this frightening passage, the transit commonly known as adolescence.

Pump Up the Volume, in addition to presenting an engaging story, has tapped into a universal truth about rebels with causes.

Pump Up the Volume, an exceedingly well-written teenager-full-of-angst melodrama about a high school student who operates a pirate radio broadcast that criticizes parents and teachers while revealing the turmoil of adolescence.

Heathers was such a black-comic revelation that Pump Up the Volume comes as a double surprise. What were the odds, particularly this early in his career, that Christian Slater would end up starring in two of the best high school movies ever? [22 Aug 1990, p.4D]

In the end, even in the howling high frequencies and the nihilistic night, this R-rated movie misses its best shot. It doesn't talk hard enough. [22 Aug 1990, p.5]

Bad teen film unredeemed by aspirations toward significance.