Wonderfully offbeat film!

Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

Better Late Then Never

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film that made Tom Cruise into a megastar. Risky Business is about an 18-year-old kid whose parents leave him for the weekend and he ends up doing some crazy things. Its strange to see Tom Cruise so young, especially dancing in his undies to "old time rock and roll". The film has an amazing collection of songs and the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream is out of this world. You have to see this film just to see where it all began for a guy who is quite possibly the biggest movie star on Earth for the past few decades.

Risky BusinessThe sense of urgency and the thrill fades away quickly before the scrutiny even hits the screen where the stakes aren't high enough as the writers anticipated; a better build up would have been adequate. Paul Brickman; the writer-director, attempts to seek in on and communicate easily with audience by approaching through something that one can easily resemble which was a smart move but unfortunately wasn't taken care of throughout the course of it. Tom Cruise is brilliant and compelling as a teenager and carries it off all in its shoulder with head held high. Risky Business is not your typical teenage movie which is true up till certain point after which it turns out to be the same repetitive slog.

I live in the Chicago suburbs, am on break from college, and my parents just went away, leaving the house to me. :)But actually, I wish I had heard about what this was about a few years ago when I was Joel's age, just to make our lives that much more similar. The film on the other hand, I have major issues with. Cruise has great charisma, but the choices his character makes are increasingly dumb. Like how is he not furious at this prostitute for stealing from him the first time? He barely said anything to her, then let her stay over again. Why didn't he go to police in first place? I honestly can't respect this character if he has zero responsibility. Everything bad that happened to him in this movie was ultimately his own fault.Overall, it was a fun movie, but took way too much suspension of disbelief to get through and I just could not respect the character at all.

Tom Cruise stars as Joel Goodson, a handsome young man from Chicago who takes advantage of his parents' house while they are away with things going way beyond what he had anticipated. Sure the plot of "Risky Business" about a promiscuous teenager befriending a likable hooker named Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) who's still not adjusted to the consequences that come with the job may have qualities about it that are quite surreal. In spite of the flaws in this movie, writer/director Paul Brickman does succeed to keep his audiences on the edge of their seats for long periods of time. Still relatively unknown at the time Tom Cruise in his most youthful role to date, plays a teenager plays the only son of wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Goodson (Nicholas Pryor and Janet Carroll) as they go off on sabbatical leave and depends on young Joel to watch over the house while they're gone. I mean what could go wrong? Joel's friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) advises Joel to take advantage of his new found freedom. Joel starts drinking the liquor from the liquor cabinet, turns the stereo volume loudly as he dances in his underwear to a Bob Seeger classic and starts bringing in prostitutes into his house for his horny pleasures. From there this movie turns its gears to the over-romanticized soft-core erotic films with its target audience being middle-aged women. The whole concept of sex for money depicted here feels absurdly casual almost like a frat party where they play spin the bottle in hopes that the bottle points in their direction while they go off and engage in intercourse without any of them caring about the dangers of drugs or disease that could raise of cause of concern. Right before the AIDS epidemic took off, "Risky Business" would have never made to the cutting room floor. Lana (De Mornay) may have set the teen up in many of the troubles he faced while his parents were gone. Joel has successfully managed to drown his father's Porsche, and get under the gun of Lana's dangerous pimp Guido (Joe Pantoliano). Both incidents are proved costly, Joel agrees for one night to partner up with Lana as he turns his house into a brothel which will help pay for the repairs while he and his friends take their horny pleasures to Lana's co-workers.It's just strangely ironic that Joel found a new lease on coolness once he starts working off his payments by working as a pimp. He shapes his outlook by sporting his hair in the middle (typical 80's right?) He starts donning on Rayban Wayfarers sunglasses (which was a trend setter in that period) and though I don't approve it, he places a cigarette to his mouth that spells out Bogart and Belmondo. There's no real moral passage to give out here, but hey, it's the 1980's back when morals were looser than today's standards. The movie is really high on style and it stands above most romantic comedies of the 1980's and beyond, but to be honest, this movie wasn't a teen comedy at all. It's for satirical purposes to exploit the 1980's materialistic integrity that was cleverly incognito as a teen comedy film. The young cast who became bigger later on excelled in the material that was given to them (even Curtis Armstrong keeps himself being too much of an annoyance). Cruise and De Mormay strive from their roles as they avoid the trap of playing stereotypical characters mainly due to the precision and timing of Brickman's direction and script.