A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

What does a Reagan-era American teen want most?

For Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise), one answer to that question is clear from the very beginning: he wants to get laid, like, so bad. But there’s another answer that is hinted at by Joel’s dreams – because these seem to always start in one way and end in another. Just as he’s getting his moves on with the hottie of his dreams, he finds himself back in school, taking his finals, it’s five minutes before pencils down, and he hasn’t written a single word. Yes, Joel wants to get laid, but he wants to excel at school at least as much, because that’s what is expected of him. It will get him into Princeton or one of the other universities that signify you’ve made it. Sure, sex would be nice, but success must come first – and it may just ensure that you get some nookie too.

Over the course of Risky Business, Joel will find that his views shift gradually – because in 1980s America, success comes before everything else, and oh boy, can success be sexy. Literally in his case, because over the course of a week where his wealthy parents go on a trip and leave their horny, anxious teenage son at home on his own, he not only ruins his dad’s Porsche and manages to crack his mother’s priceless glass egg: he also turns his home into a brothel, making much more money than he ever dreamed of. Definitely more than it takes to have the car repaired before Mom and Dad get home. And, in the end, isn’t that what business is? Selling sex in a market where sex sells best.

Of course, even a young Future Enterpriser (the extracurricular activity Joel is involved in) wouldn’t come up with the idea of literally selling sex (with the sexual services provided by others, of course – living the dream means that others do the work while you rake in the managerial fees) on his own. Especially a horny young man like Joel: what he wants is to experience it himself, not commodify it and sell it to others for his own personal gain. But a joke played on him by his best friend ends up not only with him meeting the call girl Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) and finally popping his cherry: it also provides him with the means, motive and opportunity to partner up with her and a whole load of her co-workers. What he can provide: a posh house in the suburbs, and a steady customer base: his friends, that is, so many male teenagers as eager to get it on as he was only a few days ago.

All of which sounds like your standard ’80s raunchy sex comedy: male wishfulfillment, a bunch of babes, a lot of skin, throw in a bit of jeopardy – Lana’s pimp Guido (a young, frighteningly lean Joe Pantoliano) isn’t best pleased to have his best employee stolen away by a highschool kid – and some farce – Joel’s parents aren’t to find out just what their kid is up to while they’re away for the week. And Risky Business is all of these things, in particular the wishfulfillment: while initially Joel’s quest to get some is played for laughs at his expense (which Tom Cruise, at that time just barely out of his teens himself, is more than game to deliver), his initial encounter with Lana is pretty much shot like ’80s softcore, so much so that I took it to be parody at first, expecting it to turn out to be another one of Joel’s dreams. But no: the sex Joel ends up getting out of this beats his dreams by far, and it isn’t interrupted by him suddenly finding himself in his classroom, in the process of failing his final exam.

Ah, but don’t expect Lana to be the hooker with a heart of gold that films of the time were fond of: she is business savvy, clearly not above manipulating her mark, and more than a little allergic to Joel’s attempts to project a sob story onto her to justify her chosen occupation. With a mix of sexual incentives and financial threats – after all, the services of a classy call girl like her cost a little more than even a kid of rich parents like Joel carries around in his back pocket – she nudges him bit by bit towards the point where his fantasy becomes their risky but oh-so-lucrative business. And while she offers to be his girlfriend for the duration of their partnership, the question is: where does the romance end and business begin? Or is it all just business?

Verdict: Risky Business is an odd one – and in some ways, it is not a hundred miles away from another recent instalment in our Criterion Corner series: Something Wild. Just like that film, Risky Business plays like standard genre fare on one level but reveals to have more interesting things going on. On the surface, it is that raunchy ’80s sex comedy, albeit an effective, well-crafted one. Cruise makes Joel both goofy and charming, but he also injects the character with something colder as the story progresses. De Mornay is effective as every teen yuppie’s fantasy, but she has an edge that belies her blond, blue-eyed, all-American sexiness. And director Paul Brickman goes for a vibe that is oddly moody (in the kind of ’80s synth pop way that Tangerine Dream excels at) and even melancholy, prompting viewers to look past the surface. Why not some triumphant pop rock soundtrack, to go with that iconic scene where Joel, as soon as his parents have left, rocks out in the living room to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll”?

But rocking out like a kid left alone for the first time is what Joel is when Risky Business starts. At the end of the film, Joel seems to have found the success everyone expects him to look for: far from a Future Enterpriser, he is a genuine entrepreneur of the kind that Princeton will gladly admit, regardless of his actual grades. As he says in the voiceover that concludes the film in its director’s cut: “I deal in human fulfilment.” Joel has managed the art of this particular deal – and he gets the girl to boot. But is this romance, or is it business?Just why does no one at the end of Risky Business look particularly fulfilled?