Nice Girls Don't Explode (1987) 92m.
Other film-makers could take a lesson from this comedy, which gets the right mileage out of its simple premise: April Flowers (Michelle Meyrink, a regular player in teen comedies) is kept away from boys by her overprotective mother (Barbara Harris) because fires have a tendency to spontaneously ignite whenever her hormones are aroused. When it looks as though she's about to rekindle a friendship with an old flame (William O'Leary), Mom goes into overdrive.
The film's title is suggestive of those disposable quickies from the Troma studio, but it's really nothing of the kind. I don't know whether NICE GIRLS DON'T EXPLODE is underrated, overlooked, or just unknown, but it's an appealing comedy. True, there are no great moments or humorous highlights, but the film's buoyant tone remains faithful from start to finish. This is aided by the script's trimming of subplots and padding, so that the story is almost solely constructed of ongoing oneupmanship between Harris and O'Leary, with Meyrink caught in the middle. Wallace Shawn plays a fourth character (a pyromaniac that has trouble making friends!) just to give the other three something to bounce off. What I like about the film is that all four of the film's central players not only give totally different performances, as if they had been placed together from four separate comedies, but also relate to each other in very different ways - e.g. Shawn meets Meyrink in a psychiatrist's waiting room, sells incendiary supplies to her mother, and makes friends with her boyfriend in jail, yet is completely unaware that the three of them have any outside connection. It's this state of inhabiting their own private universes that prevents everyone in the film from noticing anyone else's eccentricities - the spillover effect is that we don't think they come across as that unusual either.
The whole idea of teenage hormones literally catching alight in the heat of passion makes NICE GIRLS DON'T EXPLODE a humorous reminder of those old public information films that American youth was shown in the 50s. If it weren't for the clothes and cars, you'd swear that this film was supposed to take place in that era. In fact, it is so wholesome in its execution that it almost could have been made back then - but it's plain that the film's appearance is meant to perpetuate the tongue-in-cheek 50s morality of the whole enterprise.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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