Goin' All The Way

Goin' All the Way

United States - 1982

Director - Robert Freedman

Monterey Home Video, 1982 (Four Rivers and Clark Film), VHS (oversize box cut down to fit a clamshell case)

In retrospect, I wanted this to be terrible, I wanted a crude fumbling autistic parable of teen life. I needed to know that stupid weak people really exist, and the future of America is a vapid backslapping circle jerk of "cave-bros". On second thought, I don't think there can even be that much hidden meaning underneath such shamefully sincere waste.

There lies beneath all the mess of subgenerical diffusion, a sort of strange corner of deviation called the Teen Sex Comedy. Or maybe the Highschool Sex Comedy or some other such combination of similar words. These movies enjoyed a brief heyday in the 80's with such memorable hits as Porky's, Screwballs and the somewhat tamer skid mark of a Bill Murray movie, Meatballs. Balls. The genre has persisted into modern times, a strange, always awkward throwback to increasingly fictitious days when public highschool was goofy and awkward, but ultimately fun. Among the members of this genre exist varying degrees of sexual explicitness. Strangely, though Goin' All the Way sounds like it's among the more graphic and in the end eventually delivers, it seems perpetually unsure.

Monica, like the film itself, is driven by desires beyond her comprehension to give it up, but too scared or perhaps too romantically delusioned to do so. Artie is Monica's boyfriend, the class goof, along with his pal Vinnie (I made this name up, I can't remember and I don't like Vinnies). Vinnie sleeps with anything that moves, Artie wishes he could sleep with anything. He's dating Monica though, and she's got her legs crossed like a bouncer's arms. All her friends encourage her to fuck, and Vinnie makes fun of Artie to the extent that he and Monica break up. Artie hooks up with the school slut, who's also the girlfriend of the school fat jerk. Monica hooks up with creepy rapist college dude, also toucher of little kids. Newly free, the two boys go on a quest to get laid, goofy antics ensue, and, there's a few brief, somewhat cold scenes of boobs and heavy petting, some "bro" homophobic humor and then sex talk at school.

Through all this one gets the feeling of dirtyness. When the big shower scene is a full body solo-feature of the big fat goon scrubbing his armpits, you know there's going to be hell to pay. Minutes later, he gets friction with the ugliest girl in the movie, in the sweatiest most graphic sex scene in the movie, in the front seat of a sportscar, immediately followed by a prolonged shot of him pissing in the bushes, belching and drinking a beer. Homecoming is a "straw hat, bib-overalls type affair".

The uncut cover in low resolution.

A terrible poster from Cinema du Meep.