MovieChat Forums > Take Me Home Tonight (2011) Discussion > The real late 80s, watch and then judge ...

The real late 80s, watch and then judge retro movies and shows yourself:

posted 9 years ago by abominablesnowbat
4 replies | jump to latest

You know, I've seen so much going back and forth over the years on so many different forums over whether this or that show or movie realistically showed the 80s or even just about what it was like so I finally, to maybe end it all, went and sped through a few videos and marked out a bunch of clips to finally answer the question for real, by going back to the 80s.

At least for the shows and movies that focused on HS and college simply watch all of the stuff I've marked below and then compare and decide for yourself.

If you want one of the best views of what typical suburban '80s were really, truly like, including with how people actually really looked, dressed and acted, the whole vibe, just watch these clips from 3-4 videos actually from suburban High School life in the late '80s.

Also watch the one near the end from a Florida convenience store where some kids were messing around and filming at night that gets the 80s down fairly well, heck the guy even sounds like Ferris Bueller.

I also talked on a few that I was quickly able to find from malls, even not necessarily the best, not much real footage from the 80s mallrat era seems to exist.

One thing I'll say is that most shows and movies that get set back there tend to way underdo the hair and often overdo everything else. Everyone one like Take Me Home Tonight that wasn't really that off, still refused to quite go there with the hair enough.

In most particular, some claim that KStew was styled and written to act like so totally 80s in Adventureland and some say that movie got that stuff down more perfectly than anything else ever has because it didn't overdo the main two leads, well....

Anyway, watch these clips and then compare to various shows and movies and judge for yourself....

1987:
Now obviously people didn't go around doing this every minute haha, this was just planned for kicks, but it does show the fun, who cares if it's silly spirit of the 80s and the looks and hair styles and clothes etc.:
(the first 2 minutes are all about the same, so after a little of that you can skip to 2:00 and then watch the rest to save time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kshE2qqyq90

Now these are all from very long videos,and while any parts show the 80s, maybe start with the time labelled parts I marked out below as picking out some really 80s stuff of s decent variety for a quick taste before randomly jumping around a bit yourself (they keep going forever but if you stop where I marked out in text below for each segment you'll pretty much have gotten the entire gist of everything that happens in that segment at that point).

If you go through all of these clips you'll have your answer and then you can compare this or that movie or TV set back in that time and make up your own mind how well they got it down or not (although do keep in mind all but one of these videos is from school so it doesn't show out of school clothes much or summer vacation clothing, life at the shore and boardwalk and such (for the latter, think bright colors, lots of go-go shorts on the girls and bright crop tops, off shoulder crop tops, daisy dukes and for the guys mostly t-shirts, some polo shirts, occasionally "wife-beaters" and often shorts that were a lot less baggy and long than typically worn today by guys, etc.)):
1988:

(2:11-2:47);
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=2m11s

(2:48-4:30):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=2m48s

(9:18-11:30):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=9m18s

(19:38-21:13)
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=19m38s

(26:23-26:45):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=26m23s

(46:15-49:09):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=46m15s

(49:10-52:15):
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=49m11s

(53:42-54:20)
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=53m42s

(55:51-56:40)
https://youtu.be/NC1eKmVccOM?t=55m51s

more 1988:
(2:00-3:00)
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=1m59s

(7:38-7:45)
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=7m41s

(25:45-26:40)
https://youtu.be/UM4tls4P6Gc?t=25m45s

1989:
(0:00-0:20)
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1s

(2:38-3:40):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=2m38s

(10:17-12:25):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=10m17s

(13:06-14:08):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=13m6s

(15:16-15:40):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=15m16s

(19:35-21:54):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=19m35s

(1:06:09-1:07:35):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h6m9s

(1:14:20-1:17:16):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h14m20s

(1:17:17-1:18:00):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=1h17m19s

(50:03-52:00):
https://youtu.be/gxqjoaQYxnw?t=50m3s

more 1989:
(0:27-1:20):
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=27s

(2:00-3:00)
https://youtu.be/wYur75DflPU?t=2m2s

Some kids filming at night in a Florida 7-11 in 1987 where you can here a lot of talking, gets the 80s pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYbe-35_BaA

also, since lots of 80s life centered on the mall, even though these are not really the best overviews or clearest views, the best I could find quickly:

(also don't mistake the accents in the first three here as some 80s thing, it's just the first one was filmed in the southern Midwest, so it's just a regional accent and music from there, and the middle two were filmed in a mall just outside of Boston and so it's just the local Boston accent which also used to be considerably stronger back then in the 80s, it's still there today, although a lot of the more suburban kids and some others have partially lost it these days, anyway it's just very regional things when it comes to accents in the first three and nothing to do with the 80s in general at all.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W54i8i_sSvM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNMwLsy80-c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHJTyDCSXa4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsIFgDTPvBM

[–] abominablesnowbat 9 years ago

My feeling is that the movie reviewers of Adventureland were mostly too old and didn't realize the 80s changed a ton after 1983 and that 1987 was nothing like 1977 or 1981 when they were in school or, alternately, that no the 80s were not like some young hipster critics imagining some grungy/hipster fantasy land as somehow having been mainstream back then and that LisaP was the outsider and that the ones who were typical always dressed as wildly as she did every single day.

When they said Adventurland got '87 down perfectly and that Take Me Home Tonight got everything wrong about the very end of the 80s well.... personally I think it just shows that they were either a little too old or a little to young to be good judges of such things or living in some fantasy land where they can believe the late 80s cheerleaders worshiped Lou Reed and the mainstream kids were all some 70s hippie/90s grunge/00s hipster combination.

Neither is perfect, but TMHT seems a bit more on the spot to me in the general vibe and feel of the main leads than Jesse and Kristin were in Adventureland.

[–] abominablesnowbat 9 years ago

Although I should add the stuff above really only snapshots 1987 through 1990 or so. If you looked at 1985 into 1986 you'd probably see a scattering of girls doing the early Madonna thing and the colors would be brighter. While the hair was as 80s as ever in 1988 and much of the stuff was as 80s as even, the colors, while still bright, especially compared to the grunge era to follow, were a touch muted compared to the peak around maybe late 85 into 1986 and the videos above also didn't show as much of the off one shoulder stuff as might have been still seen in the summer or even moreso a year or two or three earlier.

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Xcalat3 7 years ago

interesting vids, thanks for the links.

It was long ago and it was far away,
And it was so much better than it is today....