the audience applauded

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I really didn't get what was so good about it? How was the first half a comedy? I don't get the joke and the pacing frags. It had some energy towards the end when Liotta breaks in the hotel, but it doesn't make sense why Lulu/Audrey would choose this guy to hang out with her out of the blue when he didn't pay his meal and it ended basically the same way. The writing was abrupt except for the pacing. Bringing Up Baby was a much funnier and crazier version of a man/woman meeting under unusual circumstances leading to a road trip or chaos. It was ok.

I generally don't care for old films. I understand how some people love them, but mostly they are not for me. The acting is too campy and overdone and something in my brain can't let go enough to enjoy the story because of it.That aside, I really liked this film, maybe because it doesn't really seem dated. If not for the obvious difference in film and filming techniques and the clothes, this could have been released yesterday. It is a story of 2 very different people that meet in a New York deli on a sunny afternoon and soon turns into a thrilling action/drama with great twists and turns! Part road trip movie, it tells of the eccentric/Gothic "LULU* (*Griffiths' character when we first meet her) and straight-laced Jeff Daniels' "Charlie" who are complete strangers yet become fast lovers and experience 3 days of total freedom and chaos. You easily get caught up in their adventures too. Enter Ray Liotta who is fantastic. So handsome and young. Lol. Well, let's just say things go from fun to dangerous. This is MELANIE GRIFFITHS strongest role to date. I wish she would've won some award for her performance. With a strong supporting cast and a great story line, this is a really good movie that everyone should see.

I have a strong habit of trying to find diamonds in the rough when it comes to great underrated 80s films. This one seems more nostalgic to the time of its release, which was,......30 years ago,.....as of this year. I also noticed that there are less than 100 reviews on this,...... Okay, if you can get passed Melanie Griffith seducing Jeff Daniels, this movie is worth a go, but has plenty of adult themes. Seems like Daniels is very much an actor who holds well for this being a 'road' movie,.....like Dumb And Dumber, need I say more. This film draws attention to Ray Loitta in his pre-Goodfellas break out role, which is not that much different from the characterization. Overall, I found it enjoyable, even though some parts of the film were predictable. Does it hold any gravity at 30?? I'm sure someone from the 80s will remember this movie.

Jeff Daniels is a nice thirtyish young man stuck in a job in finance in New York. He has responsibilities, ambition, but he's bored with office intrigues and his life in general. On an impulse, having lunch alone, he skips out on the check, just to see what it feels like. Outside, a strangely dressed, garishly made-up Melanie Griffith, who calls herself Lulu, catches up with him, threatens to expose his crime, and more or less kidnaps him.They drive through New Jersey to Pennsylvania, with Lulu flirting, lying, and thieving at every step. Her behavior is confident and outrageous. She handcuffs him to the bed and forces him to lie to his boss over the phone while she ministers to him. She asks him into the bathroom while she's peeing. Daniels begins to enjoy his release a little and they speed along and booze it up on the pastoral highways. When they reach her home town, she introduces him to her mother as her husband. Her mother, played with a great deal of rural charm by Dana Preu, sees through the ruse immediately and flows along with Lulu's fantasy. She also plays a clumsy but sweet minuet by Bach on the living room harpsichord. It gets worse at Lulu's high school reunion. By this time Lulu has changed her grooming and looks like a square young lady, and Daniels is now shed his Wall Street gear and is decked out in a loud suit and canary yellow tie. There, Daniels runs into someone who works down the hall from him at the office. Gulping with fear, stuttering, Daniels begins to introduce Lulu with some semblance of respectability, but Lulu interrupts -- "I'm his mistress." The co-worker is properly awed because Lulu is nobody's idea of a dog. Lulu goes on, "We're going to get married because of the baby." The co-worker: "You're going to have his child?" Lulu chuckles: "I THINK it's his." She delivers all her lines in a smoothly casual fashion.It's all been fun and games so far, with Daniels being Apollonian and Lulu being Dionysian, as Nietzsche might have described them. The moderate, rational, formal Daniels being corrupted -- or liberated -- by the ecstatic, drunken, spirited Lulu. By the time of the high school prom, though, they have become something of a blend. So it turns out to be what we always suspected. Daniels was a latent Dionysian -- but better latent than never. (Sorry.) Things turn dark when they run into Lulu's old boyfriend, Ray Liotta, at his most seductively evil.The comedy never really stops as Liotta takes them on a crime spree but we're now in serious territory because Liotta is like a zit about to pop with rage. He punctures things with his sharp, metal-tipped boots.It's worth seeing, if only because it's not simply stupid when it's measured against most of the garbage filling today's movie screens. There's a real sense of spiritedness as Daniels and Lulu zip along in their beat-up convertible, guzzling recklessly out of the bottle, and playing reggae on the radio, with Lulu smiling and rhythmically swaying back and forth to the beats, even while she sits behind the wheel. It's all a fantasy, of course, and there is no heavy message involved, unless it's "lighten up a little and try to avoid old boyfriends."