Romancefest 2016: Something Wild

All right let's get out of the 21st century and check out Jonathan Demme's offbeat 1986 rom-com SOMETHING WILD.

Jeff Daniels stars as an uptight business/family man who finds himself basically kidnapped by wild child Melanie Griffith as she offers him a ride to work on the streets of New York and ends up driving him deep into Pennsylvania first to meet her mother and then to go to her high school reunion.

There, they run into Griffith's ex-criminal ex-boyfriend who has recently gotten out of prison and is played by Ray Liotta. So, you know he's going to be trouble.

Daniels is great both as the straight laced square he starts out as and then later as the more loosened up and unhinged character he either becomes or reveals, depending on how you look at it. Griffith is equally as good, if not better, as an outwardly punky and "devil may care" chick who ultimately has a little more going on under the crazy image.

The movie is almost evenly split between the free spirited fun and adventure of the first half of the film, as Griffith and Daniels get to know each other on their impromptu road trip, with Daniels ultimately standing in as her fake husband for both her mom and her old classmates, and the darker second half in which Griffith is sucked back into Liotta's orbit and Daniels must decide whether to go back to what's left of his former life or to assert himself and show Griffith how important she is to him.

It'd be too simple to view this as a morality tale. At first glance it does seem to be a story about the bad shit that happens to you if you dare to step outside your comfort zone. It also seems to be about a woman as an object for two men to fight over, kidnap and rescue. But there's something slightly more complicated going on here. It's really about the patterns we fall into, the people we're inexplicably drawn to, how we can break out of destructive routines and how we can avoid judging someone we love for struggling with these things.

Maybe I'm not articulating this very well. That's all right. Jonathan Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye articulate it better in this flick and it's a joy to watch so check it out.