Pump Up the Volume (1990)

Directed by Allan Moyle. Starring Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Cheryl Pollak, Scott Paulin, Mimi Kennedy, Annie Ross, Ahmet Zappa, Billy Morrissette, Seth Green, Ellen Greene, Robert Schenkkan. [R]

By day, Slater is a meek, introverted high school outsider who seems paralyzed by the thought of engaging with anyone both in and out of the classroom; by night, he’s a pirate radio station host “rilin’ up” the young folk (and ticking off adults) with his peevish, profane rants about what is wrong with today’s society. Promising premise, uneven execution, credibility being the chief issue. Not only is the gulf between Slater’s two personalities too wide to plausibly exist in the same person, but the script never makes a convincing case about what he stands for that all these teenagers would latch onto (his tirades are either too vague, too purposeless for the sake of vulgarity, or too weak to actually inspire adulation). Full of good intentions and decent performances, and it certainly has time capsule qualities in terms of style, fashion and music, but falls far short of its potential.

49/100