The Rachel Papers (1989)
Written and directed by Damian Harris

Imagine Say Anything with Scott Schwartz in the John Cusack role, and that's The Rachel Papers, a justifiably obscure shitfest that makes a real mess out of Martin Amis's likeable novel.

I enjoyed the book back in the day, although revisiting it via this film, I was put off by the pre-Nick Hornby male ego bullshit, which endeavors to discover some kind of human truth in the transparent male ritual of "conquest." Lots of blather about how to prey upon female predictablity for sex, and the inevitable crash when the pursuit inadvertently turns up capital-L Love.

What might have been a reasonable romantic comedy is made unendurable by the miscasting of British child star Dexter Fletcher in the lead role – gangly and reptilian, he looks like a teenage Mick Jagger with more than a pinch of Gollum thrown in. The notion that anyone might want to even touch him, much less that he might wind up having wild sex with Ione Skye (as Rachel), is preposterous, and lends every scene a broad unpleasantness. Like, I wouldn't want to see a 19-year-old Haley Joel Osment taking off his pants, you know?

The plot follows Fletcher's pursuit of Skye, here demonstrating the same enigmatic air of complication that she brought to Say Anything, but it positively reeks of a macho piggishness that would probably make Jimmy Kimmel turn the thing off in disgust.

Lots of monologues delivered to the camera (a la Ferris Bueller), unfollowable plot developments, and attempted dramatic payoffs that hold no resonance. You find yourself consistently rooting against Fletcher, simply because he's so hideous.

Things take a real turn for the worse when, about an hour in, the movie suddenly becomes an About Last Night-esque sex comedy, and while I welcome any opportunity to see Ione Skye naked, I was mostly embarrassed for her, for having to touch the reptile … er, so to speak.

Skye is appealing, as is Jonathan Pryce as Fletcher's quasi-mentor brother-in-law. James Spader is on hand in a negligible role playing that James Spaderish character that he always does. I love it. It occurred to me that before James Spader, the James Spader character didn't exist, so I have to give him even more props for inventing it.

I was suprised to discover The Rachel Papers only recently, as it was a film based on a book I recall liking, and I'm an aficionado of The Cinema of 1989, The Year I Was a Junior In High School. But it's not hard to see why this movie made no impact and has no following … it's crap.

Review by Pennsylvania Ice