Girls Just Want to Have Fun

Girls Just Want to Have Fun is a weird little movie loosely based on the Cyndi Lauper song, although she refused to let them use it. It’s totally ‘80s in a fun, authentic way with Sarah Jessica Parker as a dance-obsessed teenager and her friend Helen Hunt, who wears the wildest hair accessories. It’s cute, sweet, and instantly forgettable, like cotton candy in movie form.

SJP is the new girl at a Catholic school, introducing herself by saying she loves gymnastics and dance, which grabs the attention of Helen Hunt, who’s busy cutting her own head out of a photo and gluing it onto a rock star’s body. They instantly become best friends. SJP is an Army brat, thrilled to finally be in Chicago, where they film her favorite show, Dance TV. Helen Hunt invites her to a babysitting gig so they can watch together. On the bus, Helen Hunt changes out of her uniform into a cooler outfit, including blue plastic dimetrodon hair clips.

Dance TV is pure concentrated ‘80s, all leotards, synchronized leaps, and giant, crimped hair. I even spotted one of my most prized childhood outfits on some of the dancers–a neon pink/yellow/green top paired with black Spandex bike shorts. Perfection. A glamorous woman named Ricky is carried onto the dance floor on a chaise lounge to deliver pop culture news and sign off with, “No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be as good as me.” The host is wearing a pastel suit with the sleeves scrunched up and announces tryouts for a new couple to join the show. SJP and Helen Hunt are so thrilled they don’t notice the baby they’re supposed to be watching is sitting on a pizza.

Meanwhile, we meet Jeff, a public school kid and his little sister, played by Shannen Doherty, who likes to razz him. Jeff insists he doesn’t need a dance contest to prove he’s a good dancer. We also meet Natalie, a spoiled brat with a doting, rich father.

SJP’s strict Army dad bans her from going downtown until he’s done “reconnaissance.” She ignores him, hopping on a bus with Helen Hunt, who’s now wearing a beret topped with a giant grasshopper. At the tryouts, Natalie nearly runs over SJP, so Helen Hunt makes like she’s going to hit her before sassily fixing her hair in Natalie’s side mirror instead.

We get a delightfully cheesy montage of the tryouts: cheerleaders, ballerinas en pointe, ballroom dancers, punk rockers, and twins in perfect sync. Natalie is a good dancer and makes the first cut. She bribes Helen Hunt’s partner to step on her foot and drop her so that she’s cut. SJP flips across the stage and Jeff bursts through a paper wall like the Kool-Aid Man. They make the first cut and are paired together.

They make plans to practice their routine and we see them grow to like each other as they show off their moves. She’s got gymnastics and he’s got spins and slides. Natalie spots them and tries to get SJP in trouble by pretending to be a nun and telling her parents that she skipped school, but Helen Hunt covers by telling SJP’s dad that she saved her during gymnastics tryouts when she “almost spun to death” on the uneven bars and she had to rip her fingers off the bar.

The girls get their revenge by making copies of Natalie’s debutante party invitation and handing them out to all the freaks and misfits in Chicago. Natalie’s party is fancy and stuffy, with a life-sized cutout of herself. She’s being led out by her father when a slew of punks, including SJP’s then boyfriend Robert Downey Jr. crash the party. A guy flips right through the window, female bodybuilders tear down the door, a punk shreds on the guitar, a dude stomps all over the buffet and shoves his foot into a chicken, and they all take over the dance floor. SJP signals to Jeff that she did this, and he’s impressed. Natalie screams, “This means war!”

The movie continues in this zany mode for a while. Helen Hunt distracts a nun in gym class by asking her to do the pommel horse, which she does in full nun regalia. SJP and Jeff practice their gymnastics, leaps, and a lift just like in Dirty Dancing. SJP tries to sneak out of her house but finds that her dad has installed an alarm system and adopted a barky Doberman. Suddenly, Helen Hunt appears at her window, hanging upside down. Then she flips around and her hair is still sticking straight up. They cut the alarm and get past the Doberman by using a lighter to turn a can of hairspray into a flame thrower!

At Dance TV the host argues with Ricky, who angrily quits. Stuck in traffic, SJP and Helen Hunt leave their bus and walk on top of cars while drivers shake their fists at them. SJP’s dad turns on the TV to watch a MASH rerun and sees his daughter dancing on live TV. Jeff’s dad, watching at a bar, proudly tells everyone, “That’s my son!” SJP and Jeff face off against Natalie and her partner in the final, so they go nuts with the flips and lifts and win. Helen Hunt inexplicably replaces Ricky and rides onto the stage in a carriage. Natalie bitches out her partner and her dad says to her, “Why don’t you just shut up.” Everyone but Natalie is happy, The End.

There isn’t much to this movie. It’s simple teenage wish fulfillment where everyone gets exactly what they deserve. But it’s slightly more interesting for being ahead of its time. It came out in 1985, and the plot is essentially Hairspray (1988) plus Dirty Dancing (1987), with fashion and humor straight out of Saved By the Bell, which started in 1989. It’s charming and slight and exactly the kind of thing a little girl with a VHS copy recorded from TV would have watched on repeat in the ‘80s.

VERDICT: NOT GUILTY