REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE-1955-2 1/2 STARS

I’m really pissed. James Dean should have taken over this movie, but oh no, the writers had to throw in a bunch of dumb stuff, so I had to give the movie 2 1/2 stars instead of 3! The first scene in the movie takes place in a police station where our hero Jim Stark (James Dean) is brought in for being drunk as a skunk. On the other side of the room, Judy (Natalie Wood) is brought in for being out past curfew.

Poor Judy is having problems with dad. He’s supposedly mean, cruel, and just doesn’t understand her. Whatever, who cares, let’s just get back to Jim who winds up having a nice little talk with the police therapist-Well, I don’t know what you would call him, there was a therapist at the police station, I’ve never heard of such a thing (even though there should be at least 5 counselors for every cop) so lets just call him the police therapist.

Jim sets the plot for the movie by telling the guy that the reason he does bad things, is because mom is too bossy, and dad is a spineless wimp. Okay Jim, is this the best reason you can give me for your rebellious nature, because I’m not buying it. You’re supposed to say something like this, “Look, I’m bad, and the reason I act up all the time is because my father is a stupid drunk who hangs out at the corner liquor store and mom is a crackhead who brings home five different guys every day.”

Now I can believe that story. Actually, we do get a chance to meet mom and dad, but they’re an average couple-a little bickering now and then, but nothing out of the norm. The next day, Jim spots Judy on her way to school, and decides this is a good time to hit on her, but she’s not having none of that. She hangs with a rough crowd at school, and they don’t like Jim too well. Some kid named Plato (Sal Mineo) sees Jim as the big brother type and starts hanging around him.

This is a good thing, because he gets front row seats to the knife fight between Jim and Judy’s main squeeze, Buzz (Corey Allen). Jim wins round one (kind of), but round two comes up later that night in some kind of a drag racing war. The nature of this dangerous game is, you race your car to the end of a cliff, and the first one to jump out is the loser. Well, Jim jumps first, but poor Buzz gets his jacket caught in the door, goes sailing over the cliff, and dies…………………. Bye dumbass!

Now this is where everyone should get over their devastation, and immediately bow down to King Jim who is supposed to take over as the new leader of the gang, but this doesn’t happen. The crowd walks off, leaving Judy standing in total bewilderment land, but Plato is happy that his big brother is still alive and well enough to take the two of them home.

The rest of the movie is ridiculous. Jim and Judy start hanging out, and decide that they like each other. Are you kidding me? Jim, how can you fraternize with the enemy?  Judy’s boyfriend has just died, in a tragic effort to impress her, and she runs off with you? You should have thrown her butt off that cliff too. The course of this movie irritated me to no end, as Jim goes from being the big bad rebel, to becoming a normal, average Joe. Hey, I didn’t ask for that! If I wanted to see an everyday guy, I’d walk out my front door, or call one up on the phone! At this time Jim vacillates between telling the cops the truth, and keeping quiet.

I don’t understand, why would you want to say anything? I mean, in real life you want to take the straight and narrow, but this is the movies, so Jim, keep your big mouth shut! What you need to do now is go out and try to find a couple more guys to beat up on to immediately restore your roughneck status.

www.postpalace.com

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen either. Now there are a couple of guys from Buzz’s gang looking for Jim because they think he squealed, but they don’t run into him again. Instead they find Plato, who pulls out a gun, and now the movie gets renamed from Rebel without a Cause to Plato with a Gun in his Hand and Rocks in his Head.

Click on this to see knife fight now!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=uaIq234nL04

This entry was posted on 12. February 2008 at 06:59 and is filed under Classics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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