{"id":25945,"date":"2025-03-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=25945"},"modified":"2025-03-02T12:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T20:03:14","slug":"the-small-miracle-of-the-sure-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-small-miracle-of-the-sure-thing\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Small Miracle” of The Sure Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s easy to forget when he hasn\u2019t directed a good movie in thirty years, but Rob Reiner had a 1980s as good as Francis Ford Coppola had a 1970s. His 1984 directorial debut, This Is Spinal Tap<\/em>, is one of the funniest films ever made, and in the next five years, he helmed all-time best-of-their-genre contenders across coming-of-age drama (Stand By Me<\/em>), fantasy adventure (The Princess Bride<\/em>), and romantic comedy (When Harry Met Sally\u2026<\/em>). It\u2019s a deck so stacked with beloved classics that a precious film got lost in the shuffle. His sophomore feature, The Sure Thing<\/em> \u2013 released forty years ago this week \u2013 is a forgotten masterpiece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roger Ebert dubbed The Sure Thing<\/em> \u201ca small miracle<\/a>.\u201d Ebert\u2019s review, like many on the film\u2019s release, favourably compares its emotional sophistication to teen sex comedies like Porky\u2019s<\/em>. \u201cOne of the unique things about the movie is that the characters show a normal shyness about sex,\u201d Ebert writes, unlike \u201cmost movie teenagers\u201d who are \u201cnot shy, not insecure, not modest, and occasionally not human.\u201d From the present, it sounds like he\u2019s overstating the ubiquity of Porky\u2019s<\/em>-style sex comedies \u2013 The Sure Thing<\/em> came out just weeks after The Breakfast Club<\/em>, which is razor-focused on the internal emotional lives of its sometimes shy, insecure, modest and always human teenage characters. What makes The Sure Thing<\/em> unique is how it bridges the insurmountable gap between Porky\u2019s<\/em> and Pretty in Pink<\/em>. It is, as Jasper Sharp writes for the BFI<\/a>, \u201csassy yet never bawdy and sentimental while never mawkish.\u201d Its teenage characters have sex, not as fodder for dirty jokes, but as part of their complex emotional lives. It is a film that bridges, and whose characters must bridge, the gap between sex and love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Reiner claimed never to have seen<\/a> It Happened One Night<\/em>, it\u2019s hard not to see The Sure Thing<\/em> as a teen movie riff on Frank Capra\u2019s classic screwball comedy. It\u2019s about two freshman college students who are both travelling from their northeastern university to California for winter break. Alison (Daphne Zuniga) is going to visit her square future-lawyer boyfriend. Tantalised by his best friend\u2019s tales of sex, sun and partying, Gib (John Cusack) is going to California on the promise of being set up with a girl \u2013 the titular \u201csure thing.\u201d (He\u2019s already struck out with just about every girl in New England, Alison included.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They get stuck together for the journey when they both take the same offer on a rideshare board. When the couple driving gets sick of Gib and Alison\u2019s constant bickering \u2013 not to mention their refusal to sing showtunes \u2013 they kick them out of the car in the middle of nowhere. Like Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in It Happened One Night<\/em>, they reluctantly end up hitchhiking together, and vehemently negotiate the sleeping arrangements in motel rooms along the way. In classic rom-com fashion, Gib and Alison seem like a total mismatch but slowly find they\u2019re perfect for each other \u2013 and like the best examples of that formula, it\u2019s not the flick of a switch: their arguments fizz with a rat-a-tat rhythm, so you can see how well they fit together even when they hate each other\u2019s guts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Cusack was only sixteen when he was cast as Gib, his first lead role after a small part in Sixteen Candles<\/em> the previous year. It\u2019s a virtuoso turn, the self-evident birth of a movie star. With a lesser performance, Gib would seem an overwritten smart alec, or worse, a slimy and unsympathetic wannabe lothario. (He uses \u201cDid you know that Nietzsche died of syphilis?\u201d as a pick-up line.) But Cusack is preternaturally affable, and sells a sweetness to add caramel to the salt of Gib\u2019s sex-crazed smartass act. Even when he\u2019s doing elaborate bits \u2013 when he asks Alison to tutor him, he spins a story about how if she doesn\u2019t, he\u2019ll end up going to prison for drug trafficking and dying in the gutter huffing paint thinner \u2013 it feels authentic: not an inhuman joke vehicle but the very real kind of eighteen-year-old who is very funny, but thinks he\u2019s a little funnier than that. In Cusack\u2019s hands, Gib is at once dorky and suave, world-weary and wide-eyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zuniga hasn\u2019t had as big a career as Cusack, but she is just as good opposite him. She\u2019s an ideal scene partner, relentless in the give-and-take when it would be so easy to be overwhelmed by Cusack\u2019s antics. As a character, Alison is uptight and fussy, but Zuniga never plays her as a humourless shrew. When Gib makes his first failed attempt to come onto her, she pushes him to the ground. She asks if she hurt him; he says no, and it\u2019s a perfect comic beat when she kicks him in response. In that scene, Gib uses the line \u201cwe speak each other’s unspoken language\u201d as a come-on. But when he and Alison fall in love, the truth is something better: they speak each other\u2019s repartee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Sure Thing” is not currently streaming, but it is available on Blu-ray<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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