In considering this was the decade in which multiplexes, video rental stores, and 24-hour movie channels were booming and blossoming all across the land, I remember watching HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and The Movie Channel (The Big Four) and noticing, though they showed some great old movies and some cool current ones from the previous year, they seemed to repeat a lot of them. I swear one day I watched Sometimes a Great Notion no less than four times on the same channel.
And that was the norm; I know I've seen the same thing happen with Under The Rainbow and Pandemonium, and even more to be sure, but something happened at the studio level with some movies being created, filmed, produced and distributed, too.
If these channels and rental places and all are doing such a bang-up business with showing our movies, the suits thought, then if we make more movies, we can get more hard-earned scratch by giving these guys more movies of ours to put out there.
In other words, the more movies they make, the more movies they can sell rights to show on Cinemax or rent at Blockbuster.
Smart.
This certainly made for a lot of programming and rental choices for John and Jane Public to choose from, which also meant lots of pocket money for all those poor little rich producers and distributors out there, too.
Of course, this also led to The Great Video Glut Of The Late Eighties.
From 1985 to 1989, we had literally thousands of video choices from the United States and abroad. So much so that video stores had to build extra shelves in order to display all those VHS tapes. And there were lots of them, too.
However, the drawback to this influx of material was that not every one of them was something that was very easily memorable - if they all tended to look the same, have the same people in them and recycled storylines time and again, well, that's what happens when you release 400-500 titles a month. So it was with the "Underdog Rising Up From Adversity" storyline, which was ancient by the time Rocky Balboa realized his dream back in 1976. Certainly we've seen it recycled many many times since in terms of bowling (Dreamer), rowing (The Boy In Blue), horse racing (Champions), jogging (Running), dancing (Flashdance, Footloose), and more than one football and basketball movie.
Then, we get the same storyline recycled as applied to bicycle messaging. No, not bicycle racing; we had that in Breaking Away and American Flyers. This is messaging. And this is Quicksilver.
Talk about disposable...Kevin Bacon or not. This is probably a degree to him he wouldn't mind erasing.
Check this: Jack Casey (Bacon) was at one time one of the best traders on the stock market. But after losing all of his and his parents' finances on a reckless investment gamble, Jack's spirit is broken and he drops out, tunes out and decides he will improve his lot in life far better by becoming a bicycle messenger for an independent delivery service.
Granted it's not exactly a step up but it's no worse an idea than dancing around in a barn, I guess.
Besides which, there's no better a place to meet many colorful, unique characters. Like the jovial Tiny (Louie Anderson), the budding businessman Hector (Paul Rodriguez) the token colored fellow Voodoo (Laurence Fishburne) and the expected lithe and lovely love interest Terri (Jami Gertz). Oh, there's more to be sure in this group, but it's to be expected in a messenger service that seems made up of the members of The Best Pals/Second Bananas Club.
And then there's Gypsy (Rudy Ramos), a nasty drug dealer scumbag who is using some of the messengers to courier his drugs clandestinely. Danger, intrigue, dancing routines with bikes and a hefty rock soundtrack all compete for time until we get a climax that includes stock trading and a bicycle/car chase to the death. Who dies? Who lives? I think we all pretty much know the answer to those questions, don't we?
If you've never heard of director/writer Thomas Michael Donnelly before or since, don't worry - neither has anyone else. He's only written eight films and directed four since 1980, Quicksilver being the one that most people have ever heard of, let alone seen. And not just because it has the most durable set of cliches of any of his other works...but I think mostly because it has the best soundtrack.
Looking at the music to Quicksilver, it has everything a right-thinking Eighties movie soundtrack should have. Including one song produced by Giorgio Moroder, several others written and performed by Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks, others with vocals from Tony ("St. Elmo's Fire/Man In Motion") Parr and Ray ("GhostBusters Theme") Parker Jr., and a lead song sung by Roger Daltrey. Add a Peter Frampton song and there you have it: Grade A homogenized Eighties.
Brother, and does Quicksilver know it: in fact so much so that most of the scenes in it are edited and cut so quickly in time to the beat that you'd think you were watching a co-production with MTV. All it's missing are songs by Oingo Boingo and Mr. Mister.
That's another thing about Eighties movies; if they were going to make any money at all they figured they had to have hip, cool catchy songs the teens would tap their feet to and rock out with their JuJuBes out right there in their theater seats. Unfortunately, anyone who wants to hear a good rock song is going to watch a movie that teenagers will respond to, like being stuck in a town that won't allow you to dance (Footloose) or go to a school for talented students (Fame), even if there are a mountain of cliches and stereotypes...but few teens want stories that deal with stocks and bonds.
This isn't even the only movie in the Eighties aimed for a younger audience that had a stock market subplot. Remember Hiding Out (1987), where Jon Cryer witnesses a murder and has to hide out from his stockbrokering job and lay low in a high school as a teenager? No, neither do I.
We have moments here and there that are kind of endearing for a movie like this. One good scene involves Bacon's character trying to explain to his father that he lost both his own and his parents' money that's touching and well-played by all involved. There's a scene later that has Bacon explaining to Rodriguez why he shouldn't go to a business meeting wearing a light blue prom tuxedo that has some funny moments. Another cute scene has Bacon and Gertz dancing to a soundtrack song; she in her leg warmers and ballet shoes, he on his bicycle.
These are surrounded on all sides, though, by scenes of the underdog rising up from scripted adversity, fighting vicious drug dealers and benefitting from the most ridiculous of coincidences to win the day, all because everyone likes to see Kevin Bacon beat the odds, come out on top, win the girl and stand victorious. Who cares?
Not a lot of people, apparently, since Quicksilver earned back a little over $7 million on a budget that most certainly had to have cost more to secure Bacon and all those musicians. With all of those surefire elements, why did it misfire? The biggest reason I can think of is because, like I said in many reviews before, this was yet another of those many variations on a theme that added glitz, fancy camera angles, stunts, a rockin' soundtrack and big (-enough) stars to a film that wouldn't have made it past a boardroom meeting without these extra (bicycle) bells on it.
In conclusion, during an interview in 2008, Bacon went on record as saying that being in Quicksilver was the lowest point in his career. Okay, he didn't say that; actually he said it was the ABSOLUTE LOWEST point in his career.
I don't think there's a better description of this film than that.
