Gar Conn
I don't care how many times I see this movie - it NEVER gets old. NYC was a very big deal back in the day, and this movie captured a lot of it. I miss the Danceteria and the Pyramid Club. What a fun time. The movie is very lighthearted and fun. Makes me want to go back to NYC, even though I know the good times are gone. boohoo
JK Jung
Can't believe the low rating for one of the best movies to come out of the 80s! I was obsessed with this movie growing up and am happy to see that it still holds up and feels fresh in spite of the dated references (pre-Giuliani NYC and the fact that Des lives in a huge loft on a projector man's salary). It sort of makes me miss the grittier version of NYC. Rosanna Arquette and Aidan Quinn have the BEST chemistry - actually all of the characters play so well against each other - even Gary was likable toward the end. DSS shows Madonna at her prime - they don't make them like her anymore. And the soundtrack is amazing and of course features some of Madonna's best songs. Am desperately waiting for a remake!
Gideon24
Desperately Seeking Susan is a clever and extremely well-written comic confection revolving around a bored New Jersey housewife named Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) who religiously follows the postings of a girl named Susan in the personal ads of her local newspaper because she apparently finds some kind of vicarious release in reading about Susan's wild lifestyle. One day she reads in the paper that Susan is meeting her boyfriend Jimmy in the city and decides to go to the city to actually see what Susan looks like and possibly meet her. Just as Susan arrives on the scene (unbeknownst to her or Roberta, she is being tailed by a killer), Roberta hits her head, wakes up and thinks she's Susan and that's where the fun really begins.To try and explain further would be confusing and totally ruin this delicious romantic comedy for those who have never seen it. Susan Seidelman's direction is crisp and detail-oriented and the screenplay by Leora Barish is absolutely brilliant and the real star of the film...the unpredictable twists and turns this story takes are too numerous to count, but be warned that this is one of those rare gems of a movie where if you walk away for five minutes without pausing it, you won't have a clue as to what's going on.Arquette gives a star-making performance as Roberta and she is well supported by Madonna, in her first major film role, as Susan, a character who is pretty much just a fictionalized version of Madonna herself so the character doesn't really come off as much of a stretch for her. I absolutely love the scene where Susan is in a club dancing to Madonna's smash "Into the Groove"...it feels almost like the 4th wall is broken but it really isn't. Kudos as well to Aidan Quinn as Susan's confused ex, Mark Blum as Roberta's slimy husband, and Robert Joy as Jimmy. And if you blink, you'll miss a brief appearance from ROSEANNE's Laurie Metcalf as Roberta's sister-in-law. This is a comedy/mystery/romance that, due to a beautifully constructed screenplay, on-target performances and a rocking soundtrack, makes all the right moves to an extremely satisfying conclusion.
Michael Neumann
A bored suburban housewife yearning for excitement traces the personals ad of the film's title and is thrust headlong into a series of trendy misadventures in downtown Manhattan. It plays like a more audience-friendly alternative to 'After Hours', released the same year (and, coincidentally, also featuring Rosanna Arquette), sharing the same artsy-fartsy underground NY setting, but with none of the nightmare momentum of Martin Scorsese's black comedy of errors. Unfortunately the already stale mistaken identity plot twist is reinforced by a convenient stroke of amnesia, in screen writing terms a sure sign of a desperate imagination. The film is a slave to contemporary fashions, carried to extremes by the casting of Madonna as the tawdry, streetwise title character. She couldn't act to save her own life (and in a role which should have been second nature to her), but let's be fair: the script doesn't give her much to work with, being nowhere desperate enough to qualify as the modern urban screwball comedy it aspires to.
AD
