The Best of Times (1981) : The Dawn of Cage [Mike’s Review]

Here we go, The Best of Times. Never heard of this one until Joey clued me in. I’m full of hope and optimism as I open the excellent home made DVD case Joey made me. When I put the disc into the tray and close it, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Not sure why.

Cage Club certainly is starting off with a BANG! This “movie” is the pilot of a TV show about a group of teenaged friends. I was expecting this to be something like the first two episodes of a sitcom cut together to make a feature presentation for investors to gauge the tone and style of the show they intend to make. However, this plays like a comedy variety hour geared towards teenagers. It’s a journey of fractured structure and bad writing that hopes to recreate the unplanned randomness of youth, maybe. Right out of the gate, we the audience are constantly being treated like we are IN this show. Crispin, our teenage tour guide thru this surreal friendscape, talks to us directly by smashing that 4th wall within’ the first minute. He wants us to get to know his friends by telling jokes, singing, dancing, recycling and some good old fashioned straight talk. Well, I’m only interested in one of Crispin’s friends today and that guy is his best friend, Nic.

When we are introduced to Nic Cage for the very first time ever in our lives we don’t even see his face. We see a shirtless guy in “daisy dukes” doing one armed push-up’s on the beach. Now, I know how hard regular push-up’s are so I’m willing to bet the one armed type are way harder, plus he’s doing them on sand. One armed push up’s on concrete I could believe but sand makes you sink into it when you apply pressure increasing the difficulty greatly. This says so much about Nic and I still don’t know what he looks like. When we do get our first really good look at Nic there is no mistaking it, that’s the guy we will all know and love someday. As the show goes on we visit a few locations that we will re-visit several times throughout, one being The Beach. This is Nic’s domain. 90% of the time this is where you can find him working out, giving advice about women or expressing his fears about War and his own uncertainty. He is the Bodhi of this beach. Nic, The Bodhisattva, a modern savage.

When not tanning and strutting, Nic & his friends hang out at 7-11 a lot and annoy Jackie Mason by bringing in bottles to recycle for pocket change. But when the gang brings in bottles from another store the boss ain’t having it so everyone breaks into a musical number using what they can find as instruments. If Jackie Mason just gave them money for the bottles I bet they would spend that money at 7-11 anyway. It’s a win, win situation for Jackie and now there’s a gang of rowdy teens performing Musique concrète in the aisles. ( As a former 80’s child I can testify to seeing this go down all the time at the local 7-11 or “sev’s” ) This sequence is insane and sets the stage for the whiplash nature of the pace along with the outlandish quality of content. From this point on anything goes.

These kid’s are inhuman with the amount of energy they have and motivation to get things done. We see them go to school, the mall, the beach, ride Go-carts, join a band, do make-up, recycle and that’s just when they are not singing. They broke into the song “9 to 5” while working at a Carwash. They broke into what I think is an original song written for this movie while doing chores then while riding Go-Carts. They sang “Heartbreaker” while Jean shopping ? ( the heartbreaker sequence is actually my favorite musical number in the movie because of that ladder shot! ) Then, to top it all off there is a school dance! Ironically nobody sings here but there is lots of rug cutting in some very interesting interpretive dance. Not to skip too far ahead but next movie is Fast Times at Ridgemont High and you can see there how they crafted an elaborate and entertaining tapestry of teenage life as if you were a fly on the wall. This is the complete opposite. It’s like something a marketing company devised by approximating what kids like and how they think with test audiences and surveys. The Best of Times feels like something they shipped to middle schools for assembly screenings.

As things start winding down they get a lot more serious than I was expecting. Up until now being a kid was all fun and games. Work was as fun as shopping and your friends had all the answers. But when reality comes crashing down, just know you are not alone. In what I can only describe as testimonials, some of the kids address the camera and briefly divulge their social fears of the future. None more so than Nic whose big fear is War because he’s old enough to be drafted. While he possesses uncanny confidence about sports and his body, Nic is very unsure of himself when it comes to more intellectual endeavors like college and fears going to fight oversees. WHAT ? Jill is worried about leaving behind her dolls and making new friends in college while Nick goes off to basic training. The scope of issues is just too broad here. It makes your head spin like Beetlejuice. Nic goes on way too long about his Dad being messed up because of Korea and how War spoils things before totally bumming me right out. How do you expect me to bounce back from Nic walking away down the beach in tears to being screen wiped into the school parking lot the night of the big dance? When I see Crispin telling me that his parents met at the school dance and him getting down like George McFly while the band rocks out I’ve totally lost it and this movie wins.

I should say that about wraps it up for this entry. In conclusion I actually think you should watch The Best of Times for a reason. It is the first ever appearance of Nic Cage so right there you know at least his parts will be entertaining. You can see that he really did have something way back then and would actually deserve the success he achieves down the line. Probably another reason to see this is the absolute ridiculousness that is this experiment of broadcasting. I truly struggle to find anything to compare this with. Next up is Fast Times at Ridgemont High with a lot of future stars and Nic Cage who was originally planned to have a larger role than he winded up playing. More on that next time. Until then please catch the CageClub Podcast audio version of the blog. Bear with me as I struggle my way through my first attempt at Podcasting in years and attempt to dissect The Best of Times even more.

Mike

@the_mikestir

*The Best of Times custom boxart by Joey