{"id":2627,"date":"2024-08-21T15:22:14","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T15:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2627"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:44:49","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T17:44:49","slug":"gregorys-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/21\/gregorys-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregory’s Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Gregory’s Girl <\/strong>(1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Samuel Goldwyn\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (brief nudity, some language\/sexual conversation)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bill Forsyth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bill Forsyth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Colin Tully\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Coulter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 26, 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Gordon John Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Clare Grogan, Jake D’Arcy, Alex Norton, Chic Murray, John Bett, David Anderson, Robert Buchanan, Allison Forster, William Greenlees, Caroline Guthrie, Alan Love, Carol Macartney, Douglas Sannachan, Graham Thompson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating:<\/strong>\u00a0****<\/p>\n

\u00a0Let’s jump in the Wayback Machine and go back to summer \u201982 when teens flocked to see raunchy comedies like Porky\u2019s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Zapped. In doing so, they passed up the delightful coming-of-age comedy Gregory’s Girl<\/strong>. <\/strong>The Scottish import, written and directed by Bill Forsyth (Local Hero), is a direct counterpoint to the sleazy American teen comedies with their far-fetched pranks and coarse treatment of sex. Whereas they tend to objectify and\/or humiliate girls, Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> dares to treat them as actual flesh-and-blood people. In the early 80s, that was a bold move.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> centers on a 16YO lad named Gregory (Sinclair, That Sinking Feeling), an awkward sort who towers over his classmates due to a recent growth spurt. He reminds one of a stork. He still hasn\u2019t figured out how to navigate his new body. His recent loss of coordination costs him his position on the school soccer team. Adding to his embarrassment, he\u2019s replaced by a girl named Dorothy (Hepburn) who happens to be a very good player. She quickly becomes the team\u2019s star player.\u00a0 Instead of being resentful, Gregory falls in love with her. Or so he thinks. Like his friends, he\u2019s just learning about girls and has no idea what he\u2019s doing. He spends most of the movie trying to work up the nerve to ask her out. When he finally does, she accepts. What happens to Gregory next is most unexpected and sweet.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What makes Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> so wonderful is how well it gets teenagers, particularly boys. Porky\u2019s and its wave of imitators give the impression that teen boys have sex on the brain all the time. No doubt some of them do, but it\u2019s not true of all of them. A majority of teen boys are just as puzzled by the opposite sex as Gregory and his mates. They\u2019re awkward around girls either not knowing what to say or saying the wrong thing. Take Gregory\u2019s friend Andy (Buchanan), a diminutive lad whose idea of a pick-up line is explaining how veal is made to a couple of girls in the cafeteria. Gregory\u2019s one up on him. He simply doesn\u2019t know how to go about asking Dorothy out on a first date even though he claims to be in love with her. Thankfully, his sister Madeline (Forster) is there to help with that. At the tender age of ten, she already has a better handle on the subject than her clueless older brother.<\/p>\n

In addition, Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> proves beyond any reasonable doubt that girls mature faster than boys. When it comes to teen romance, boys flail about helplessly while girls tend to retain some perspective. Most often, girls are ahead of boys in their analysis of any given situation. Dorothy gets that Gregory has a huge crush on her. She\u2019s kind and patient, yet distant. She knows something he doesn\u2019t. She and her friends have something special in mind for the first date. One of them points out, \u201cIt\u2019s just the way girls work. They help each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s nice to see a teen movie that doesn\u2019t depict girls as objects of humiliation or bubble-brained bimbos. In fact, Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> stays away from teen archetypes altogether. There are no super studs, fat slobs, sluts or nerds. These are real teens, believable in their self-consciousness about every one of their perceived faults. Gregory is a likable dork who babbles when faced with an awkward situation. The movie treats his infatuation with respect and good humor. In fact, the whole of Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> is in good humor. There\u2019s none of the mean-spiritedness that defines most teen comedies. It\u2019s only mildly concerned with sex. The boys don\u2019t obsess over losing their virginity. They\u2019re not out to \u201cscore\u201d. They don\u2019t scheme to catch girls in a state of undress. The closest it gets to something like that is the opening scene where some of the guys hide in some bushes to watch an attractive older woman get undressed through her window. In the capable hands of Forsyth, it comes off as funny instead of smarmy.<\/p>\n

The entire cast of Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> does a wonderful job, but I\u2019m especially fond of Forster\u2019s performance as wise-beyond-her-years younger sister Madeline. This kid is 10 going on 30. In just a few scenes, she commands the viewer’s attention as she advises Gregory on proper dating etiquette despite not having any particular interest in boys. Sinclair is painfully perfect as gawky Gregory, a good-natured kind of guy unaware of anything beyond his crush. Hepburn is terrific as Dorothy, a smart, mature, articulate, agile, attractive and personable young woman. She\u2019s the type of girl we all wished we had the courage to speak to in high school. Jake D\u2019Arcy (Still Game) has some funny moments as the socially inept coach who doesn\u2019t quite know what to make of the girl who wants to play a boy\u2019s sport. It seems that some adults never grow out of their teenage awkwardness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the end, Gregory’s Girl<\/strong> is about that innocent kind of first love all teenagers experience. \u201cInnocent\u201d is the key word here. First love should be innocent. It should be about taking walks, eating chips, dancing in the park and kissing at the end of a date. It doesn\u2019t have to be about going all the way. Forsyth totally gets it. The result is this gem of a movie. Everything about it is spot-on perfect. The viewer is treated to a simple score by Colin Tully rather than a Top 40 soundtrack. It augments the movie’s sweet tone. It\u2019s one of the most delightful teen movies I\u2019ve ever had the pleasure of watching.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gregory’s Girl (1980)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Samuel Goldwyn\/Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (brief nudity, some language\/sexual conversation)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Bill Forsyth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bill Forsyth\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Colin Tully\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Michael Coulter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 26, 1982 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Gordon John Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Clare Grogan, Jake D’Arcy, Alex Norton, Chic Murray, John Bett, David Anderson, Robert Buchanan, Allison Forster, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hidden-treasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Gregorys-Girl-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3505,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions\/3505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}