Risky Business(1983)
24/07/07 21:12
The
queerest part of this film occurs in the opening
titles, when the name “Tom Cruise” is followed just a
few seconds later by “Music composed and performed by
Tangerine Dream.” From then on, Risky
Business reveals
itself to be quite possibly the straightest movie Mr.
Cruise has ever been involved with.
I blame the man himself. In 1983, Tom Cruise was the guy you called when Timothy Hutton was busy. It predates both Cruise’s ability to choose his own material (leading him to phallic romps like Top Gun and Cocktail) as well as his ability to read it.* I have no intention of making fun of him for his dyslexia, I only mention it because I think his relative difficulty mastering the material and lack of star status made him bend more readily to the will of writer/director Paul Brickman. In any case, aside from the stripper moves in the Bob Seger dance, which is the only moment when anything in the film remotely resembles the way a sex-worker would actually behave, Risky Business is far more auto- than homoerotic. Watch for shots of hoses and cars backfiring, and be glad that it isn’t as queer as Top Gun, since Cruise’s best friends are played by Curtis “Booger from Revenge of the Nerds” Armstrong and Balki from Perfect Strangers, an actor whose only demonstrable sexual chemistry featured a stuffed sheep and a man playing his long-lost cousin.
Out of a possible 5 Mansilk Pouch Thongs I give it a 1
*Cruise has been very open about his dyslexia, which was corrected by Scientology in 1986, with no help from those hornswagglin’ snake-oil-dealin’ psychologists.
I blame the man himself. In 1983, Tom Cruise was the guy you called when Timothy Hutton was busy. It predates both Cruise’s ability to choose his own material (leading him to phallic romps like Top Gun and Cocktail) as well as his ability to read it.* I have no intention of making fun of him for his dyslexia, I only mention it because I think his relative difficulty mastering the material and lack of star status made him bend more readily to the will of writer/director Paul Brickman. In any case, aside from the stripper moves in the Bob Seger dance, which is the only moment when anything in the film remotely resembles the way a sex-worker would actually behave, Risky Business is far more auto- than homoerotic. Watch for shots of hoses and cars backfiring, and be glad that it isn’t as queer as Top Gun, since Cruise’s best friends are played by Curtis “Booger from Revenge of the Nerds” Armstrong and Balki from Perfect Strangers, an actor whose only demonstrable sexual chemistry featured a stuffed sheep and a man playing his long-lost cousin.
Out of a possible 5 Mansilk Pouch Thongs I give it a 1
*Cruise has been very open about his dyslexia, which was corrected by Scientology in 1986, with no help from those hornswagglin’ snake-oil-dealin’ psychologists.
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