Valley Girl

Coolidge hasn't made a campy, condescending comedy, but a satiric romance, in which the background gags and caricatures contribute to a sense of significant conflicts and solid emotions. It's irresistible.

This simplified Romeo and Juliet tale was written and performed with such heart and care that it is impossible to dislike. The cast is wonderful, headed by the engaging couple of Cage and Foreman and wittily directed by Coolidge.

Basing a teen film on Romeo and Juliet? It'd had been done. Replacing a Montague and a Capulet with a San Fernando Valley shopping-mall habitue (Deborah Foreman) and a sensitive Hollywood punk (Nicolas Cage)? Now we're talking.

Valley is very good simply because director Martha Coolidge obviously cares about her two lead characters and is privileged to have a couple of fine young performers, Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman, to make the audience care.

Coolidge has no axe to grind with Valley Girls. They’re simply teenagers subject to the classic problems of love and peer pressure, albeit spiced with their own distinct valley jargon. Coolidge directs all this with a light hand and the non-stop musical score features music by the Plimsouls, Josie Cotton, Clash, Men at Work, Sparks, and many more.

Since somebody this year was bound to make a movie called Valley Girl, let's be grateful the job fell to director Martha Coolidge, who has a light, satirical touch, and screenwriters Wayne Crawford and Andrew Lane, whose modest exploitation movie is thoroughly good-natured. [09 May 1983, p.85]

The characters and their jargon are occasionally amusing, but there's no action, no conflict, no overwhelming satire and nothing to jolt them out of their lethargy.