Watching Teen Wolf (with Michael J. Fox) as an adult

Cafe Society
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The other day, I watched “Teen Wolf” while walking on my treadmill. It was a movie I remember watching when it first came out, when I was 3 or 4 years older than the characters were supposed to be. Now I’m older than the adult characters (curse the linear progression of time). Observations

Jay Tarses (who plays the apathetic coach) gets the best lines - this bit I liked in particular

Coach Finstock : Look Scotty, I know what you’re going through. Couple years back, a kid came to me much the same way you’re coming to me now, saying the same thing that you’re saying. He wanted to drop off the team. His mother was a widow, all crippled up. She was scrubbing floors. She had this pin in her hip. So he wanted to drop basketball and get a job. Now these were poor people, these were hungry people with real problems. Understand what I’m saying?

Scott Howard : What happened to the kid?

Coach Finstock : I don’t know. He quit. He was a third stringer, I didn’t need him.

The rowdy high school party didn’t seem like fun when I watched the movie in college - it seems even less fun now.

Casting James Hampton as Scott’s father - I bet they really wanted Tom Doyle (I mean - the guy ran a hardware store, just like Mr. Cunningham).

The last third of the movie makes very little sense. The villainous teen comes up to Scott at the school dance, and punches him; Scott gets up and attacks the bully - and Scott is the only one in trouble?! I’ll accept for the sake of argument that Scott shouldn’t have responded physically to being assaulted by the punk, but if Scott is in risk of being in trouble, so is the other kid. And Scott’s lesson is not that he needs to control his temper (since he can easily kill someone), but rather that he shouldn’t use his natural talents in any way. Remember kids - being weird in any way is wrong. It might be tolerated for a while, but only to give you time to learn to suppress your weirdness.

P.S. The theatre teacher is creepy.

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About the only thing I remember of that movie was in one of the gym scenes one extra in the stands discovers to his horror that his fly is down and fixes it on camera…

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And I missed that in this viewing!

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This was the very first movie I saw at Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs after we moved back from Germany to the United States. And come to think of it, I haven’t seen the movie in its entirety since then just a few scenes here and there. I recall enjoying it but it didn’t have much of an impact because I never cared if I saw it again.

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Either you meant Tom Bosley, or you meant David Doyle (who played Bosley on Charlie’s Angels).

James Hampton was also in Condorman.

Anyway, on topic, I haven’t seen Teen Wolf since forever, but I don’t think it’s meant to be held up as one of those seminal 80s movies like Ferris Bueller was. Unlike Teen Wolf Too with Jason Bateman.

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Do’h. I mean Tom Bosley.

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And damn was Pamela a fickle whore!

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Bill Simmons called it one of the few basketball movies which actually captures the secret of basketball - that it’s not about the star but how the star interacts with his teammates, either elevating or deflating their games.

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It’s still better than Zapped! with Scott Baio.

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HER fly.
I’m going to swear… although can’t find a source…someone recently discovered that it was a woman. Like they saw an alternate cut or it screened somewhere and in the theatrical version that scene isn’t cropped like that and its clearly a woman.