Valley Girl Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Valley Girl Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson November 9, 2018

The "valley girls" in Martha Coolidge's fiction debut are the teenyboppers and hot babes who frequent the Sherman Oaks Galleria and California beaches. They hail from the relatively affluent suburbs and take advantage of their parents' deep pockets by using their credit cards to buy expensive clothes. Julie Richman (Deborah Foreman) and her three girlfriends are prototypes for those teens enjoying the luxuries afforded them through their upper middle-class families. Julie is a smart, vivacious, and independent girl who doesn't always choose her boyfriends according to class and privilege, though. As Valley Girl opens, Julie has initiated the breakup (while she's going down the mall's escalator) from her beau Tommy (Michael Bowen), a blond stud whose probably his school's top jock. However, Tommy is very possessive and nowhere near as bright as Julie. At a valley party, Julie is hanging out with her friends when in walks two punk rocker types from Hollywood (or "Hollyweird") High: darkly handsome Randy (Nicolas Cage) and his sidekick, Fred Bailey (Cameron Dye). Randy approaches Julie whose slightly amused but not that interested in him. But Randy has a mysterious charm about him that starts to rub off Julie. Meanwhile, Tommy has not given up in the least of re-pursuing his former squeeze and throws Randy and Fred out of the house. Randy comes back with a vengeance, igniting a brawl as well as a battle to win Julie's heart.

A young Romeo and his Juliet.

Coolidge and her writers, Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford, present the valley girl teen experience in a quasi-ethnographic style that breezily captures the time, place, mood, and semblance of the characters. They all have sharp ears attuned to "valley speak" lingo. The actor utter phrases like "fer shere," "totally tubular," "like really awesome," and "grody to the max" with a natural inflection that makes them wholly believable and authentic. Where Valley Girl struggles is in the editing, scenic construction, and leisurely pace. There's an important scene in the second half where Julie's hippie father, Steve Richman (Frederic Forrest), gives his daughter a heart-to-heart on choosing the right guy. The dialogue is very good but it would have worked better had it been inserted directly before the climax. Coolidge and her screenwriters depict Julie torn between going back to Tommy or staying with Randy. It almost seems that Steve's fatherly advice is undone by the sway Julie's girlfriends hold over her. There's isn't much substance to Tommy but the girls want Julie to remain a member of that class-based clique. I also thought that the girl Randy has a brief romance with at the Hollywood nightclub could have been given an expanded role in the narrative. Randy is downcast over Julie's rejection of him and the dreamy girl clearly gives him that spark to woo Julie all over again. It makes me wonder if they previously had an intimate relationship? Though the multi-hit New Wave rock soundtrack dazzles and keeps the film's pulse going, Coolidge plays things too low-key, leaving me a bit underwhelmed.

Valley Girl Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

For the worldwide premiere of Valley Girl on Blu-ray, Shout Select has released a Collector's Edition of the 1983 film. This is the fiftieth title to be released on the subspeciality label. Shout has struck a new film master from a 4k scan of the original negative. The movie appears in its originally exhibited aspect ratio of 1.85:1 on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. This is a very pleasing transfer with color schemes that accurately reflect the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood locations. Malcolm L. Johnson of the Hartford Courant describes Randy's favorite hangout as a "din-filled, smoky cellar" and it looks that way here. There is no aliasing on this new print and contrast is significantly better compared to the image on MGM's Special Edition DVD. The grain structure is consistent and very evenly balanced throughout the frame, with no evidence of trailing or stability issues. There is some dirt during the main titles and infinitesimal white dots but the restoration overall is excellent. Shout! has encoded the transfer at an average bitrate of 31999 kbps.

The 99-minute feature contains twelve chapter selections.

Valley Girl Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout has created a new DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround remix (3050 kbps, 24-bit) and also included a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono track (1598 kbps, 24-bit) from the original monaural. Characters' dialogue is often on the low end but is easy to understand mainly through the center speaker. When Randy whizzes into town with his friends in the controvertible, there's good separation from speaker-to-speaker of f/x from the motor and tires. The ballads are by such bands as The Plimsouls, Men at Work, The Clash, The Flirts, Modern English, The Payolas, The Jam, and Josie Cotton. Singing and instrumentation for the diegtic and non-diegetic songs carry excellent depth and practically equal range on both the front and rear channels. There's a near-perfect balance to the musical sounds on front and back speakers. How many are actually performed in the film? According to The Cincinnati Enquirer's film critic Betsa Marsh, twenty-six were featured in the version of the movie she saw in in late May, 1983. The underscore by Marc Levinthal and Scott Wilk is a nice complement to the musical numbers. My audio score is 4.25.

Optional English SDH are available.

Valley Girl Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

For its new set of extras, Shout reunited director Martha Coolidge with her actors E.G. Daily (Loryn) and Heidi Holicker (Stacey) for a round-table discussion of Valley Girl. There's also a mini-featurette where Holicker shares her orginal LP soundtrack album and production photos with her two collaborators. The featurette on the history of San Fernando Valley is filled with nuggets by a historian whose the curator of a museum housed with artifacts preserved in the valley. Tommy Gelinas of The Valley Relics Museum hosts this program. Shout has also lifted most but not all the bonus materials from the two MGM SD editions. The Coolidge commentary track originates from ca. 1999. Missing are a "Video Commentary Track" with several cast members and an "Eighties Nostalgia & Trivia Track." All vintage extras are presented in 1.33:1 with spoken English and no subtitles.

• Audio Commentary with Director Martha Coolidge

• NEW Valley Girl in Conversation (50:11, 1080p)

• NEW Greetings from the San Fernando Valley (19:14, 1080p)

• NEW Show and Tell (4:47)

• NEW Storyboard-to-Film Comparisons (11:30)

• In Conversation: Martha Coolidge and Nicolas Cage (20:00, 480i)

• 20 Totally Tubular Years Later (24:15, 480i)

• The Music of Valley Girl (15:57, 480i)

• The Girls (47:51, 480i)

• The Boys (54:09, 480i)

• The Parents (42:59, 480i)

• The Bands (54:11, 480i)

• The Producers-Writers (14:17, 480i)

• Music Videos (8:13, 480i)

• Trailer (2:27, 480i)

Valley Girl Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Valley Girl is a fine time capsule of teens living it up in San Fernando Valley and Hollywood during the early 80s. In the final analysis, though, there are an array of teen sex comedies ranging from Little Darlings (Where are you, Paramount?) to Fast Times at Ridgemont High that are just as good if not better. Valley Girl does stand well on its own. I believe Atlanic Releasing mislabeled it a sexploitation film as its terribly mild and very tame. I'm not implying that the filmmakers needed to make it ramp it up like in Porky's but dramatically, it just needed some more spice. I also think Coolidge went on to make better films such as Rambling Rose (1991), which sorely needs a BD release. Shout Select has given Valley Girl an outstanding transfer and extremely well-balanced 5.1 track. The three-way conversation between Coolidge and her two stars are both informative and revealing. I realize this is a milestone HD release being the first time Nicolas Cage did not use his famous namesake (Coppola). It's a MUST BUY for fans of Cage.