Something Wild Poster

Something Wild (1986)

Comedy | Romance 
Rayting:   6.9/10 16.3K votes
Country: USA
Language: English
Release date: 5 November 1987

A free spirited woman "kidnaps" a yuppie for a weekend of adventure. But the fun quickly takes a dangerous turn when her ex convict husband shows up.

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Hey_Sweden 21 January 2017

Jeff Daniels plays Charles Driggs, a straight arrow yuppie who decides one day to skip out on his cheque for lunch. A stranger, "Lulu" (Melanie Griffith), notices this, and correctly surmises that he's a "closet rebel" kind of guy. He's the perfect guy whom she can fit into her plans, so she sort of "abducts" him and makes him pose as her husband. However, the guy whom she is actually still married to, an ex-convict named Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta, in his breakthrough film performance) shows up, and things take an uglier turn.

As written by E. Max Frye and directed by the talented veteran Jonathan Demme, "Something Wild" is engaging for quite a while. It manages to be pretty zany in spirit, and somewhat unpredictable. Daniels, who's often made a career out of playing straight arrow types, and the kooky, delightful Griffith, who sports a brunette wig at first, work decidedly well together. One is amused by their misadventures and wondering what sort of mess that Lulu will next create for Charles. However, the film is somewhat overlong, and changes tone for its second half for a much more conventional narrative of Ray dominating the proceedings and occasionally terrorizing Charles. (Not to mention Charles taking quite a shine to Lulu and refusing to let her go without some sort of fight.)

Fortunately, Daniels and Griffith are so utterly engaging that they make this trip worthwhile. Liotta is a powerhouse in the role of the volatile husband; I'm sure that back then, theatre goers and critics alike could see that this guy was going places. Lovely Margaret Colin is good in an underwritten role, and is unceremoniously dropped from the story. One other complaint that this viewer had was that this cast features some top notch character players - Tracey Walter, Charles Napier, Robert Ridgely - and director cameos (John Sayles as a motorcycle cop, John Waters as a used car salesman), and then makes such brief use of them. One might wish that they had more to do.

The eclectic soundtrack is solid accompaniment for this generally agreeable movie. It may not move that well, but it does come up with some very nice moments along the way.

Seven out of 10.

teh_mode 8 May 2006

Fmovies: It's easy to take actors like Ray Liotta and Jeff Daniels for granted with the benefit of hindsight. Both of them have had ups and (horrible) downs, crossing genres seamlessly or inexplicably. It can also be argued that neither one of them has been more gratifying, more liberated, more, well, wild than in their breakthrough roles in Johnathan Demme's road movie. With the help of Melanie Griffith's femme fatale they make a very interesting movie about finding your wild side, but also finding out about the nasty underbelly lurking beneath society's pickett fences.

After being accused of ripping off a diner, a yuppie accountant named Charles sets off on a wild road trip with the free-spirited Lulu. Along the way she manages to bring out something special in Charlie, accusing him of being a closet rebel. They decide to get themselves in various troublesome situations, like running out on roof-splittingly expensive restaurants. They soon run into trouble, however, when a former love of Lulu's (or Audrey's), Ray, turns up at her high school reunion, after what appears to be done time in a jail.

Demme's film switches from screwball situation comedy to black farce and then to an uncomfortable menace. At times we're not really sure what this woman wants with Charles, whether she is after money, scheming, or indeed really has fallen for our floppy-haired protagonist. Daniels injects his hapless hero with all the dopey charm and middle-class wit one could ever hope to see in an 80s suit-wearing yuppie. He wants to eschew his suburban divorce style for a rebellious wild-at-heart rebel, and insists upon doing it with the impulsive, slightly reckless, but utterly alluring Lulu. The problem is, when he discovers his wild side, he has to deal with the ensuing problems: He's just been made Vice-President at his firm - What would his work mates think? How does he deal with the psychotic ex-con boyfriend? Does he really know what this woman wants? He appears, for most of the movie, to be a sap, who could fall for more than he could handle. But coincidentally, he's a pretty good liar, so maybe he's no better than the rest of them.

But even if the underlying philosophy doesn't hit you, then the comedic set-pieces definitely should. One particular scene involving handcuffs, suspenders, a dinky motel and a a phone call to his work office particularly sticks in the mind. It's not often you get movies like this. Movies that share a good balance between intelligence and farce. How can you go wrong?

RTFJR1 8 June 1999

This movie really keeps you going without knowing what's coming around the corner. Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffith were terrific together and Ray Liotta added a great dark side to the comedy of Daniels and Griffith. What looked like a strange love story turned into the strangest ending which kept my interest right to the end. Great movie which showed Daniels and Griffith are good actors. Have seen this movie at least 15 times and still love it!!!!

gedhurst 26 April 2017

Something Wild fmovies. Rewatching Something Wild recently some 30 years after I first saw it, I was struck by how vividly the craziness of the story stayed in my memory, but also how surprising and unexpected the plot turns were. This is a good sign that that someone took time to craft an excellent plot. In fact, the film makers have lavished tender loving care on every aspect of this film and given it a lot of heart.

Melanie Griffith does everything but set the screen on fire as she takes Jeff Daniel's humdrum office worker life and turns it upside down. We're then taken on a helter-skelter anything-goes trip where the couple leave the city and the staid conventions of middle class life behind as they plunge into a passionate affair and journey deep into the comforting familiarity of small town America with its motels, folksy shops and and kindly people. Ironically this is where the greatest danger lurks in the shape of old flame Ray Liotta, grinning maniacally and flipping the madcap whimsy into insane violence.

Every minor character on this trip fills you with good vibes, in sharp contrast to the sinister kind of twist that current-day Hollywood mainstream gives to bit players. The soundtrack, for fans of 80s music, is fantastic - you're bound to hear stuff you haven't heard for ages.

This film works on many levels: the actors are charming and charismatic, and their parts are well and sympathetically written. It's a loving memoir of a materialistic decade that many thought was money-obsessed but was filled with many hapless characters like this reviewer who lived similar episodes in their own lives: except not so wild!

NNancy1964 20 May 2003

I truly love this movie when I need to totally vanish from real life for a couple of hours. I wholeheartedly agree with the comments about how it goes from fun to serious almost seamlessly, but one part has been overlooked. The visit to Audrey's mother, Peaches, is almost abrupt in its quietude ("Don't call me Lulu, call me Audrey" changes everything), and it makes you wonder how Audrey became as free-spirited as she is. Peaches is no dummy, either... she reads right through Charlie with an air of a woman resigned to never really knowing her daughter. This little visit is the bridge between the fun and scary, the surreal and frighteningly real, and asks more questions than it answers... which works perfectly.

jzappa 12 September 2009

Not even remotely corny like one would expect of a 1980s romantic comedy, this fierce, libidinous entertainment stars Jeff Daniels as Charlie, an externally button-down banker whose mojo is readily fluttered by audacity in women, and Melanie Griffith as Lulu, an alcoholic sex machine with an amply fertile mind. Daniels plays some of the same notes here that he used in Terms of Endearment, where he was the firm, competent, straitlaced husband and father who liked to have relations with perky coeds. He looks like he was born to wear a suit and a tie, but he has that insubordinate glint in the right light. Griffith's performance is founded not so much on sexual excitement as on nerve: She is able to persuade us, and Daniels, that she is likely to do almost anything, particularly if she thinks it might shock him.

Even while they're standing on the sidewalk in front of that restaurant and she's making like she's charging him with theft, there's a spark between them. The casting is critical in a movie like this. There has to be some kind of brutish cohesion between the man and the woman or it doesn't make any difference how sharp the dialogue is. Once they've made their connection, Daniels freely goes along for the ride. After awhile she even takes his handcuffs off, although he sort of liked the idea of having lunch in a restaurant with the cuffs dangling from one of his wrists.

They drive down the East Coast from New York to Tallahasee, while she steals money from cash registers and he capsizes into the conscious daydream of the sensually exhausted. At Griffith's high school reunion, Daniels runs into the last person he wants to see, the accountant from his office. And Griffith runs into the last person she wants to see, her husband, Ray Liotta. I will stop here. The uncertainty of the tension must not be ruined.

If Demme and screenwriter E. Max Frye had developed this movie as a madcap comedy, it most likely wouldn't have worked as well. Their feat is to think their characters through before the very first scene. They know all about Charlie and Lulu, and so what happens after the confrontation outside that restaurant is virtually inescapable, cnsidering who they are and how they look at each other. This is one of those few movies where the story acts shocked by what the characters do, and not the other way around.

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