Fun Boss Movie Day: Hiding Out

Here's the tagline for this movie---ready?

"There's only one thing more frightening than murder...high school."

Really, that's all you need to know to deduce that it was made in 1987. Why were people in the 80's so fascinated with high school? (I say, hypocritically, with a printed off e-mail from my high school crush that I can't bear to throw away.)

Hiding Out was on Showtime last weekend and I was in heaven. I have a weakness for Jon Cryer. Not only because of Ducky--although it goes without saying that the character will live forever in film history--but also because I have a soft spot for cute, neurotic and slightly cocky underdogs a la Michael J. Fox.

So here's the plot of the movie: a successful stockbroker witnesses a murder and goes on the run, taking refuge with his cousin and pretending to be a high school student while he hides out from the mob. A really great performance by Jon Cryer as a 30-something guy (or maybe 28? I was trying to figure out what they could get away with) who unwittingly inspires the student body and falls in love with a high school senior after she writes a paper about how big of a crook Nixon was.

Best scene ever: Sitting in class as the grumpy history teacher berates the high school beauty (Annabeth Gish) for having the audacity to say such things about the old lady's hero, Nixon, Cryer guffaws and looks around for some shared sense of disbelief at her idiocy. The joke is, he's the only other one old enough to remember.

Yeah, it gets a little creepy sometimes thinking that the love story is probably statutory rape, but I'm pretty sure they never actually do the deed during the movie. And Cryer is incredibly boyish. That makes it okay anyway. Right?

91 stars in all it's 80's-montaging gloriousness. Netflix it immediately.