Our top 5 love story films: 5 - Valley Girl

Valley Girl , 1983.

Valley Girl is the classic tale of girl falls for boy from the wrong side of the tracks, played out against the backdrop of LA in the early 1980s. Our heroine, good-girl Julie (Deborah Foreman) lives in the valley, hangs out at the mall with her friends and dates the hot-headed douchebag jock Tommy. That is, until she meets "bad boy" Randy, Nic Cage in his first (and best!) role. It's love at first site between Julie and her Hollywood punk, and they date blissfully, dipping in and out of each other's worlds until her friends get all up in her ear and convince her he's "bad news". Typically, she succumbs to the peer pressure, dumps her true love, and gets back with Tommy. Cue the quentissential 80s prom scene, where Randy crashes the dance, decks Tommy and (with a nod to The Graduate) escapes with Julie in Tommy's limo. Happy ever after. 

It's not deep. There's no hidden subtext. What it is, is a sweet and surprisingly innocent 80s bubble gum version of Romeo and Juliet with a killer soundtrack and a happier ending. Shot on a very low budget, the actors wore their own clothes and some of them worked for free. Cage and Deborah Foreman dated during production, and I love how much you can feel the chemistry between them come through on screen. It also contains, in my opinion, the best dating montage on film.  If you can get through the stilted dialogue and cringeworthy valley-girl-speak, this movie is a totally tubular feel-good guilty pleasure, and our number 5 love story film of all time.

Notable lines: 
Julie on Tommy: "He's got the bod, but his brains are bad news."
Randy on music tastes in the valley: "That techno rock you guys listen to is gutless!!"