YA: Your Athenaeum

New to the Athenaeum’s YA corner is another 1980s teen classic, Say Anything.

You probably recognize the now-iconic image of heartbroken Lloyd (played by John Cusack) holding his boombox aloft, hoping his persistence and the tunes of Peter Gabriel will bring his beloved Diane (played by Ione Sky) back to him. But this scene comprises only a few seconds of a more complex movie about love, family, honesty and trust.

Diane is beautiful and brilliant - the valedictorian of their recently graduated high school class - and no one really gets what she sees in Lloyd, who is a devoted boyfriend but an aimless underachiever. Diane’s father, who acts as her closest friend and most trusted confidante, particularly disapproves of the relationship. She values his advice enough to break things off with Lloyd, but before she can leave for England at summer’s end, Diane’s world is turned upside-down.

Roger Ebert wrote that “Say Anything is one of those rare movies that has something to teach us about life… That such intelligence could be contained in a movie that is simultaneously so funny and so entertaining is some kind of a miracle.”