Pump Up the Volume (Film Review)

1990 New Line Cinema
Written and Directed by: Allan Moyle
Starring: Christian Slater, Scott Paulin, Ellen Greene, and Samantha Mathis
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 105 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10

Mark Hunter is living two lives. By day, he's a shy geek who never talks to his classmates at his suburban Arizona high school. By night, he's "Hard Harry," the voice-disguised, raunchy pirate radio station DJ his classmates just can't stop listening to. Mark's angry that his family has left their East Coast haunts, just so his father could take a prestigious school commissioner job. No one has a clue who Hard Harry really is, especially Mark's parents, who bought him the broadcast radio to try to call his old friends back home. As Harry's infamy rises, his biggest fan, and unknowing classmate, Nora is relentlessly trying to find out his true identity. As Harry starts to strike a nerve at his sinister school, tragedy strikes, and he thinks of shutting everything down...but instead, when the pressure's on, he decides it's time to...
Pump Up the Volume.
...
Sorry.
Er...
Most teen movies would only use this kind of subject matter to grab the lowest hanging fruit. Harry would just act raunchy to pump out cheesy punchlines. Eventually, he'd meet a nice girl, experience a life-changing romance, and realize he doesn't have to act out anymore. 1990's Pump Up the Volume ain't that kind of movie.
Pump Up the Volume takes Mark's pain and the pain of his classmates quite seriously. At the same time, it doesn't sensationalize that pain, or turn its subjects into caricatures. These kids feel like real teenagers trying to get through a crappy situation together. Their dialogue, crafted by the film's writer/director Allan Moyle, feels natural without coming across as generic. Furthermore, Moyle is able to strike against societal corruption in a way that feels absolutely timeless, and particularly pertinent 30 years later. Sure, there are a couple of goofy moments, but they're few and far between, and aren't the things that stick.
What sticks is the film's beating, bleeding heart, personified in the best performance of Christian Slater's career. Slater absolutely is Mark/Harry, in a way that breaks down cinematic pretense--if this was presented as a documentary, you'd have no idea that Mark/Harry was only a character being played by an actor. Slater's co-star, Samantha Mathis, picks up his lead, making it near unbelievable that Nora Diniro is the first big-screen character she's ever played. This is a special, special film, the kind the trappings of Hollywood rarely allow projected on the screen. It's a movie that's actually, uncompromisingly honest and earnest.