Pump Up the Volume - A Review?

Yes, I am blogging about the (now nearly) 20-year old Christian Slater movie, and the reason I put the question mark in the title is because I'm not really sure how much of this is going to be a review and how much is going to be reflection, general babbling, whatever...

Pump Up the Volume is kind of like Stryper or Shirt Tales, in that I remember being intensely interested in all of these things at the time and then forgot about them completely until I stumbled across them one day (like today) or someone mentioned them and I was all like, "Damn! - I haven't thought about that in years."

Now that alone is not particularly weird, but with the exception of Stryper, the point (I think) I'm trying to make is that some things just have their time - it isn't so much that they're trendy or latching onto a fad - they were very relevant for their time, but their time has passed. And when confronted with these things out of their element, they seem dated in one sense, but because they evoke such memories, they're very hard to separate from their time and still manage to somehow resonate.

Of course, managing this isn't hard for a movie like Pump Up the Volume, which follows your basic teen-angst rebellion formula, but I am still faced with the very real possibility that I'm giving it more credit than it's due simply because I was such a fan of it when it was released - when, of course, I was a teenager filled with the very self-righteous rage to which such a vehicle speaks. But it may still hold some significance simply because they don't really make movies like this that often anymore.

Now don't get me wrong - I haven't lost my ability to critique nor my usual, stellar taste in art. Pump Up the Volume is poorly directed, sub-standardly acted (though both Slater and Mathis stand-out), and (as I mentioned) follows a very concise formula quite literally by the numbers. Stock, teenaged characters facing parents that "just don't understand" and an oppressive regime of corrupt authority figures find the only way they can survive the turmoils of adolescence is by facing who they really are - and they find this all out through a series of fun and clever misadventures which result in a series of fun and clever (not to mention ultimately quotable) one-liners... But the flip-side of that same coin is that such a formula exists specifically because it works so well.

And this formula - the John Hughes formula, if you like - worked fairly well in Pump Up the Volume, but again, the movie was ultimately forgettable due to the shortcomings in the direction and cinematography. Essentially a solo piece, director Allan Moyle's staid, stationary cameras simply do not work the way they might have in an ensemble flick of the same nature - but more importantly, here was a movie that was literally crying-out for dynamic camerawork, yet Moyle chose to pin his hopes on the charisma and intensity of a brooding Slater (is there any other?) and cutting-edge music (some of which is still pretty good - Pump Up the Volume was the movie that introduced me and my friends to Der WeinerSchnitzel, after all) - most of which is embarrassingly dated.

I was shocked to see that PUtV actually won several awards at the independent level, but that "indie-flick spirit" was one of its attractions and maybe that's why, for all its pretentiousness, PUtV still works on some level. Plus, for all its formulaic mediocrity, Pump Up the Volume manages some genuine moments of comedy, pathos, and emotional resonance (there's that word again).

Overall, one of those forgotten flicks that really deserves some place in the Gen X mythos, if for no other reason than that the soundtrack features Bad Brains with Henry Rollins!

© C Harris Lynn, 2008