Overrated and overhyped

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great Film overall

An action-packed slog

Anthony Edwards played an 18 year old college student from Los Angeles, California where he goes to Paris, France on vacation. He meets Sasha, a Czech woman played well by Linda Fiorentino. The film begins with a silly game called Gotcha! I thought the film would be more funny than expected. It has some serious moments. Linda Fiorentino and Anthony Edwards' characters have chemistry onscreen. The adventure abroad in Europe during the last days of the cold war in the eighties were interesting. Alex Rocca and Marla Adams were cast as Jonathan's parents. The film is enjoyable and entertaining. I didn't think it was such as serious film with the title so I was pleasantly surprised. Both stars were getting their career started with films like these. The plot and mystery isn't as predictable to the audience.

Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) and his college roommate Manolo play a campus-wide Gotcha! game where they hunt their assigned targets with paintball guns. They go on a school sponsored European trip. Jonathan meets Czech woman Sasha Banicek (Linda Fiorentino) who only likes virgins. She talks him into taking a detour to Berlin and even going over to East Berlin. She is transporting a package back over to the West. She gets taken and he escapes from Soviet agents.I don't like Anthony Edwards' character. It's not as bad as hate but I find him annoying. I totally get why the girls avoid him. He's not funny, too needy and pathetic. There is a way to play the hot cute nerd. This is not it. He should be shy and scared to approach girls. It would also help if the character is younger. He's played for jokes like his conversation with the waiter but it's fingernails on the chalkboard for me. Rosario is even worst. Linda Fiorentino is a great femme fatale as always. He's a little too dumb to live but Fiorentino can make a guy that dumb. The story is outlandish. I'm willing to accept the movie but I don't like the guy.

In my book, Gotcha! is another good movie in Anthony Edward's catalog of 80s movies. Edwards is Jonathan, a somewhat wimpy looking college student who's afternoon frat boy fun of tagging his rival classmates with a dart gun as he chases them around campus, is about to come a reality in an arena of gritty international espionage. And Jonathan oughta know, these guys don't f**k around. Jonathan and his buddy, Manolo (Jsu Garcia) take a trip to Europe during semester vacation. For Jonathan, he'd like to spend times soaking up the local culture with beautiful girls, but he's just too quiet for all of that, unlike Manolo, who's so brazen that his pick up lines are thinly disguised stories about him being a spy and needing an escort to help distract those who are following him. So, of course Manolo gets the girl.But Jonathan soon get's lucky, too, meeting an elegant, but secretive Russian woman named Sasha (Linda Florentino) who gives him some story about being an exchange student and all of that. He even ditches his friend, Manolo (they were supposed to go to Spain) to go with his girlfriend to Germany, which is not an ideal vacation destination in 1985. But Jonathan, smitten with his new girlfriend, finds out there is more going on, and soon enough, his little games of pretending to be a spy are going to help him get out a real jam, or else he's going to wind up dead. It is actually a really enjoyable movie, seeing this quirky guy stuck in a real life game of cat and mouse.

What can I say, but this is one of those "eighties movies" featuring Anthony Edwards before he was "Goose" and Linda Fiorentino before she was that chick in M.I.B.Plot Summary: A paintball enthusiast utilizes his finely tuned skill at hiding behind things when he gets involved with a CIA courier working behind the Iron Curtain. East Germany meets West L.A. with some really funny stereo-types that weren't all that tired when this movie came out in '85. This film is primarily aimed at entertaining young men with a 007 lust. Still, there are so many one-liners and funny bits that my sister and I still make references to this movie when joking around, e.g. "I thought he was KGB from Russia." ~ "He's a CPA from Encino! Are you outta your mind?"The utilization of various on-location landmarks make it fun and almost like a travelogue movie. There's a German fortress, the Louvre (pre-pyramid entrance), the eiffel tower, the UCLA campus, Olvera Street in Downtown L.A., and the Bonnaventure Hotel.I also love this movie for introducing me to Pernod, and the scene in which it is introduced is so funny I can still remember it line for line!! I love this movie!!