Early 1960's cool dude dies defending his honor in a car race. In order to
get into Heaven he has to do a good deed: helping out a certain "
spazola"
teenager in the 1980's.
While the story is pretty much by-the-numbers (only the nerd can see ghost; nerd
is in love with hot chick even though his female friend is hotter and has a
heart of gold; nerd-to-cool transformation montage; nerd bags hot chick and
defeats bullies; nerd becomes arrogant but then learns his lesson) it's still an
amusing watch. No surprises, no risks taken just a simple story about a dork and
his guardian angel.
For some unknown reason when I sat down to watch THE HEAVENLY KID I was
expecting it to be a light-hearted sex comedy, but outside of a few humorous
moments during the high school segments it's actually a fairly serious film.
Zero naked broads, mostly unfunny jokes including a lot about Heaven and Hell,
lessons learned, forgiveness, very limited swearing, hell THE HEAVENLY KID is
almost a Christian movie!
Worth watching, I guess, but you're not missing much if you decide to skip
it.
Out of curiosity I looked up THK's
box office run
to see if it made any money at all (it didn't...$3.8m total) and it's easy to
see why it flopped. During it's first week it went up against: BACK TO THE
FUTURE, E.T.,
RAMBO 2,
EUROPEAN VACATION,
MAD MAX 3, COCOON, SILVERADO, PALE RIDER, ST. ELMO'S FIRE and THE GOONIES!!! Then the
next weekend
FRIGHT NIGHT, WEIRD SCIENCE and FOLLOW THAT BIRD showed up and THE HEAVENLY KID isn't even
on the chart anymore! My God, the summer of 1985 must have been the best summer
for going to the theater ever!!!
Why is there a wedding cake in the high school cafeteria?