steven@ism70.UUCP (02/28/85)
THE SURE THING Starring John Cusack and Daphne Zuniga. Also starring Anthony Edwards, Boyd Gaines, Viveca Lindfors and Nicolette Sheridan. Directed by Rob Reiner. Written by Steven Bloom and Jonathan Roberts. Produced by Roger Birnbaum. Photographed by Robert Elswitt. Production Designed by Lilly Kilvert. Edited by Robert Leighton. Music by Tom Scott. From Embassy Pictures. (1985) I'll go out on a limb and predict this movie will do two and a half to three million its opening weekend, then increase the second week due to good word of mouth. _T_h_e_ _S_u_r_e_ _T_h_i_n_g comes the closest of any movie I've seen in ages to perfection in a romantic comedy. Gib (John Cusack) is a freewheeling freshman at a small East Coast Ivy League college. His Freshman English classmate (the soon-to-be-some-kind-of-household-name Daphne Zuniga) is a dead serious, compulsively organized type. Gib wants to go out with her, but she won't have anything to do with him. The two of them find themselves hitching a ride together cross-country to California for the Christmas break; she to see her stuffy boyfriend, he to meet a "Sure Thing," a beautiful blonde who wants Gib with "no no questions asked, no strings attached, no guilt." Of course by the end of the movie, Daphne and John have fallen in love for good. Naturally. What did you expect? A gang of bikers? Sounds pretty old, pretty stale, pretty much all been seen before? Granted, _T_h_e_ _S_u_r_e_ _T_h_i_n_g works an old vein. The film is all Hollywood, all structure, all comedy and tender moments. It is not a stylistic groundbreaker. But _T_h_e_ _S_u_r_e_ _T_h_i_n_g does everything is sets out to do with complete self assurance. Rob Reiner shows the same flair for creating on-camera chemistry that he did with the boys of _T_h_i_s_ _i_s_ _S_p_i_n_a_l_ _T_a_p. I'm half expecting the two leads to announce their engagement in the L.A. Times Calendar section. That's how convincing a couple they are. In fact, the center of the film, which is their sniping dialogues and all the scenes that the two have on the road is _s_o good, _s_o believable and _s_o funny, that some of Reiner's safety nets seem unnecessarily contrived. Daphne's boyfriend doesn't have to be that stuffy. Reiner doesn't _h_a_v_e to call up the ghost of _R_i_s_k_y _B_u_s_i_n_e_s_s as explicitly as he does. Great chemistry. Great script. Wonderful execution. Does everything it sets out to do and a little bit more. Three and a half stars out of four.