If you’ve been wondering, like I have, which movie has Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear to Bob Segar’s Old Time Rock & Roll. It’s this one. I found it. It’s Risky Business. And… this film is not what you think it is. Or at least what I thought it was. I mean, for years, I’ve seen that scene referenced in everything from other movies to Domino’s pizza commercials. So, I guess, I built it up in my head as probably being another teen party movie that the ‘80s was chock-full of. Which, I think is fair because the only things I had to go off of was that scene and the movie’s description on IMDB which reads “A Chicago teenager is looking for fun at home while his parents are away, but the situation quickly gets out of hand.” To me, that reads party. But that is not what this film is.
This movie, if you can allow me to spoil an over thirty year old movie, is about Tom Cruise starting a cathouse in his parents house, while they are on vacation, so that he can pay to fix his father’s car after it ended up in Lake Michigan while Mr. Cruise was on a date with a call girl. Yeah… pretty far from what I thought. As I’m sure you can imagine, with this being a teen comedy from the ‘80s, I also went into this movie expecting it to not have stood the test of time and come across being very problematic. Just google “problematic ‘80s movies” and you’ll see how many popular movies show up. Compared to some of those… this does pretty well.
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s still pretty problematic. I mean, the entire plot of the film is based around high school boys hiring call girls to have sex. While a lot of the teens are established as being seniors and therefore arguably eighteen, which still isn’t good but is at least better, in the big scene where Mr. Cruise has a lot of his classmates over to purchase time with the call girls, there are some boys there that look far less then eighteen. So, that’s a pretty upsetting and problematic implication. Also, in this scene, an admissions officer from Princeton shows up to interview Mr. Cruise about attending in the fall. Mr. Cruise then bribes his way into an elite school by having his prostitutes sleep with the interviewer after bombing the interview. So, that’s not great.
Also, not to go to much off on a tangent but while I didn’t apply to any “prestigious” enough colleges to have to have an admissions interview, I can’t imagine standard protocol is for the interviewer to show up to the student’s house in the middle of the night while their parents aren’t home. That’s just very weird.
Back to my main point, Mr. Cruise also attracts so many to his makeshift cat house by, in a montage, appealing to his classmate’s frustrations that they were spending a lot of money on dates only for the girls to not “put out”. Which is a real great message to be sending out to the youth. Lastly, there is some transphobia and I’m pretty sure the only character of color in the movie is the said person the transphobia is directed at.
But it could have been a lot worse, the film didn’t use any racial or homophobic slurs. Which were almost required in a lot of ‘80s teen comedies. Also, additionally, even though they are only in one quick scene, the trans prostitute is nice to Mr. Cruise and gives him some good advice. Mr. Cruise even uses all the right pronouns in that scene, which yes is a very low bar of decency to be congratulating the film on but I got to give credit where credit is due. Lastly, this film shows a relatively progressive view on sex work and sex workers. While most movies, even to this day, demonize sex workers, in this one they are shown to be strong, confident women who out smart Mr. Cruise at every opportunity.
Is this movie perfect? No. It is pretty far from “woke.” But it had a lot of opportunities to be a lot more problematic in a time, and industry, where it not only would have been OK but would have been expected. Now, I don’t think we, as a society, should be going around congratulating people on not being a terrible as they could have been but I do think credit is due here.
Now, the film itself is OK. It’s a perfectly fine way to spend an hour and forty minutes. But if you’re looking for an ‘80s teen comedy Ferris Buller’s Day Off is much better or if you are looking for a Tom Cruise movie where he is shirtless Top Gun is where I’d send you. You can just google the scene from this movie where he dances in his underwear and watch it for free.
