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Of all the movies I have seen about growing up as a teenager, this one is far and away my favorite. It is also the one that hit me the hardest emotionally in that after seeing all these movies about the nerds and jocks fighting each other on school grounds, this one had characters that I could actually relate to. We were going through the years of "Beverly Hills 90210" which infected us with a fantasy version of the high school experience where you could have your troubles as a teenager, but that you would come out of it with a smile, a cute boyfriend or girlfriend, and some fancy fancy clothes that make you look oh so incredibly cool. "Pump Up The Volume" does not exist in that fantasy world, thank goodness. Christian Slater gives one of his all time best performances as Mark Humphreys, a high school senior who has just moved into an Arizona suburb from New York that looks like it is in the middle of nowhere. He is a shy and withdrawn kid, clearly not happy about his situation. He can't talk to anybody, not even his parents who he feels completely aliennated from. By night, he is Happy Hard On, running a pirate radio DJ station deep in the basement of his new home in the dry and lonely land of Arizona. He could not be less withdrawn if he tried on the radio as he goes into rants involving faked masturbation, rants on the world around him, on his parents, and his pathetic life or what has become of it. As time goes on, his radio set ends up drawing in more and more listeners who relate to his message of talking hard. Chaos starts to rein at his new high school, and the administration works to control the situation, having no idea of what the kids are really going through. This scares Mark off to the point where he wants to stop doing his broadcast, but since this is one of his biggest outlets for fustration and aggression, he can never bring himself to stop. It's just as well because he has become the voice that he kids in town need to hear. The movie covers a lot of ground that most teenage movies don't bother to. It's much more down to earth than that which for me was a huge relief. I got so used to seeing movies about the dork succeeding in winning the girl of his dreams or overcoming the jocks who make him believe that he is so uncool. Watching me that made me feel more ostracized than I already felt. So this movie was a godsend in how it had a character that I could almost completely relate to. The kids out there today need movies like this to make them realize that they are not the only ones going through this, and that being a teenager is not all it's cracked up to be. A lot of people have complained that the adult characters in this movie are largely one-dimensional. While I can definetly see some validity in that argument, the thing you have to see that some of those adult characters are not all that far off from the real characters they are based on. Annie Ross is the principal of Hubert Humphrey High and is a true b*tch in every sense of the word. She lives to have students with the highest SAT scores in the state, and has no time for troublemakers who sees as those who "have no interest in education." I have friends of mine who are teachers, and they do not hesitate in telling me just how much they hate the principals they work with. The way they are described to me, they are even worse than the one Annie Ross plays in this movie. Then you have Mark's dad, who at first seems oblivious in how to deal with his son's problems, but he turns out to be a hero to the students in the end. Whereas the principal is non-hesitant in expelling those she feels are undeserving of an education, Mark's dad sees that it is a basic right to an education that everyone deserves to have no matter how bad a student they may appear to be. Another great performance that came out of this movie was by Samantha Mathis who plays Nora Diniro, a total rebel who appears on the surface being who she is. She is a free spirit who befriends the terribly shy Mark, and who later figures out that he is really Hard Harry. She becomes Harry's conscience as she makes him realize how powerful he has on the kids on the town as well as on her. She makes him that as much as he wants to, he cannot back out of his responsibility to the people who believe in him. For me, this movie was a godsend. It gave me a person that I could relate to in the movies and in life. Most teen movies after awhile filled me with a neverending feeling of utter resentment as they featured kids who got to experience things that I hoped to experience at that age, like getting laid. All the misfits and social rejects and those who felt dejected and rejected need and deserve a movie like this. After all these years, it remains a movie that is very close to my heart and which I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone. email this review to a friend
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