Paying tribute to “Can’t Buy Me Love”

The movie poster for the 1987 classic "Can't Buy Me Love"..

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Buy-Love-Patrick-Dempsey/dp/B000065V3H

(May be subject to copyright)

When I was in high school I would have done just about anything to get the girl I really liked to notice me. I thought if she got a chance to see me and get to know me, she would go out with me.

That is why I connected so deeply with “Can’t Buy Me Love” which came out on this day, 37 years ago, in 1987.

Ronald Miller was a nerd, a brain, a guy everyone knew but was ignored by the cool crowd. Worse yet, the girl he really liked, Cindy Mancini, had no idea who he was beyond being the guy who mowed her lawn.

I could relate to Ronald Miller instantly.

Then, the movie takes a fantastic twist, something that could never happen to me. However, it symbolized the lengths any of us feeling that way would go to.

Cindy has ruined a suede suit her mother told her not to wear. It cannot be cleaned, and the store won’t take it back. Her only option is to buy a new suit. Obviously, she does not have the money.

While this drama is playing out, Ronald is set to buy the telescope of his dreams. He has been saving up all the money he made mowing lawns to get to this point.

As he is about to close the deal, he sees the situation unfolding in a nearby store with Cindy Mancini.

He takes his $1,000 cash and goes to the clothing store. He will buy that new suit for Cindy, but there is a catch – Cindy has to go out with him for one month.

What unfolds is an incredible story that, to this day, remains my favourite movie. I think I have seen it a dozen times at least, and own it on DVD.

The story
A very young Patrick Dempsey plays Ronald Miller and Amanda Peterson plays Cindy Mancini. After they make the deal, Ronald meets Cindy before school, and she really has no interest in hanging out with him. He points out he saved her butt and did pay $1,000. That is a lot of money even now, and would equate to $$2,771.09. Besides, it’s only for a month.

So, she tries to give him an instant makeover, tearing the sleeves off his shirt, flipping up his collar, and giving him some mousse to rub in his hair. Her friends show up, and are kind of shocked when Cindy introduces “Ronny”. Then they grill her during home economics class.

After school, they go to a favourite hangout of the cool crowd. Ronald buys a pizza. Cindy urges him to go up to the cool kids. He invites them over to their table for pizza and they just devour everything. Ronald is left looking forlorn, picking up a solitary anchovy to eat.

Soon, he begins to fit in and become accepted by the “in” crowd. Meanwhile his actual friends, led by his best friend Kenneth Warman, are left wondering what has happened to Ronald. At one point, he asks Ronald when they are watching a movie in class, only to discover Ronald has fallen asleep under his sun glasses.

Cindy and Ronald seem to grow closer. He shows her one of his favourite places, the airplane graveyard. In turn, she shares poetry she has written, something she hasn’t shown anyone else.

It looks like she is falling in love with Ronald. The month is up, and Ronald asks her what is next. You can see she wants to tell him that she likes him. He, on the other hand, is intoxicated by his new popularity and wants to plot how they break up. Seeming dejected, Cindy still goes along with the plan.

The next day, they have a massive fight in front of everybody. Because he is part of the in-crowd now, the guys go with him, while the girls go with her.

The day after that, he bursts into school, acting cool, dressed in the latest cool clothes. His transformation is complete. Ronald is now cool, going to all the parties, and actually scoring with some of Cindy’s friends who are fighting over him.

In a low point for Ronald, it is Halloween, and the guys invite him on their annual Halloween prank. They attack the same house every year. This year, they have filled a brown bag full of dog poo, and are going to throw it on the front door of the same house they attack every year. Ronald recognizes it instantly – it’s Kenneth’s house. He tries to convince the guys to go to another house, but it is no use. So, not wanting to jeopardize his new status, he throws the poo on the door.

Kenneth, his dad, and his brother, have laid a trap because they know it’s coming. A net falls on the perpetrator. Kenneth is the first to see the shadowy figure struggling to free himself from the net. It’s Ronald. Kenneth is just stunned and lets Ronald get away. When his dad asks what happened, Kenneth mumbles there must have been a hole in the net.

Later, Ronald is invited to a high school dance. He is terrified because he doesn’t know how to dance. He plans to watch “American Bandstand” to learn some steps. His brother Chuckie is watching the TV and Ronald kicks him off. There are two people doing this wild dance on screen. Ronald studies it, absorbs it, and leaves. Chuckie re-enters the room just in time to see that it is not “American Bandstand”, but PBS The dance is not a popular new step, it’s the African ant-eater ritual. Chuckie just starts to laugh.

Fast forward to the dance. Ronald keeps re-buffing his date’s overtures to dance. Finally, he can hide no longer. He takes a shot of alcohol, goes out on the floor, and starts to do the dance. Instantly, everyone starts to follow. After all, if Ronny’s doing it, it must be new. His old friends look at what is unfolding on the floor and exclaim as one, “It’s the African ant-eater ritual.”

Things have also frayed between Ronald and Cindy. He is consumed by popularity and becoming an egotistical jerk. She is dating guys who look cool, but are just shallow.

Christmas comes, and there is a big New Year’s Eve house party. Cindy’s boyfriend, who was away on football scholarship, returns and comes to the party. He catches wind that Ronny Miller had the captain of the cheerleaders. He confronts her in a closed room. All you can hear is muffled yelling. He storms out of the room, pointing at Cindy and yelling, “That makes you a prostitute.”

Cindy then points to Ronald and tells everyone the whole story. She turns on everyone and says when he bought her, he bought all of them. She chides them for that stupid dance and accuses them of being a bunch of followers. She concludes by saying, “At least I got paid.”

She had been drinking straight vodka, so she stumbles off and her two best friends follow her. The guys kick Ronald out of the house.

In a sad, poignant scene, Ronald’s friends are cruising the street lamenting they have nowhere better to go. One of them says it could be worse, pointing to a guy wandering alone, with his coat pulled over his head. They don’t realize it is Ronald.

Understandably, after that, Ronald is a pariah. The cool kids have banished him, and his old friends are not interested in him. He even goes to see Kenneth at an arcade and Kenneth won’t even look at him. Ronald tries to apologize, then tries to get Kenneth to look at him. Kenneth pushes Ronald and says, “You shit on my house!” and repeats that. Ronald is in tears, because he knows.

He also tries to make things right with Cindy. She won’t return his calls. He sees her going into the washroom, and tells her how he feels through the door, only a teacher emerges and takes him to detention. He even dispatches his brother to talk to her at the mall, but all she gives him is a face full of powder.

In the climax of the movie, Kenneth is in the cafeteria helping Patty, one of the cool girls, with her homework. Quint, one of the cool guys, sees this and thinks Kenneth is trying to “pull a Ronald McDonald Miller scam”, and vows to send him back to his side of the cafeteria. He grabs Kenneth, who is scared. Ronald sees all this, grabs a baseball bat, and tells Quint to leave Kenneth alone. Quint scoffs. Ronald threatens to break his pitching arm, then tells Quint he broke his arm once before. He fell out of their tree house and Kenneth picked him up and carried him 12 blocks to the hospital. They were all friends then. Now, they were cools, nerds and it was all BS. Ronald said he messed up because he tried to buy his way in. Kenneth was just trying to make friends by being himself. Quint shakes Kenneth's hand, Ronald walks away, putting his hand briefly on Kenneth’s shoulder, and the cafeteria erupts in applause.

In the last scene, Ronald is back where he started, mowing Cindy’s lawn. She comes out to pay him, and she says she’ll see him around. Her friends drive up, and Cindy gets in their convertible. They say hi to Ronny because they’re all friends now, and drive off.

Then, the car stops, Cindy gets out shouting “Ronald!” and joins him on his lawn mower. He asks her to the prom and she accepts – as long as he doesn’t do that stupid dance.

Cindy takes the black cowboy hat Ronald is wearing, puts it on, climbs on the tractor with Ronald, and they drive off into the sunset as “Can’t Buy Me Love” plays.

It was awesome.

The aftermath
“Can’t Buy Me Love” had a deep effect on me. The first time I saw it in the theatre was with my friends Chris Vining, David Hetesy, and Randy Skiba.

After the movie, we went to Buffalo Bill’s on Mayor Magrath Drive in Lethbridge, one of our favourite hangouts. My mind was so full of ideas for my own writing project, I kept scribbling notes on a placemat. That was the genesis of a novel I started during National Novel Writing Month called “Pick Up”.

A couple weeks later, I was hanging out with Bill, a friend and neighbour. He liked a girl named Nancy, and I had a couple crushes. We went to see “Can’t Buy Me Love”, then the two of us commiserated about our love lives at that same Buffalo Bill’s.

A few weeks after that, I had moved to Edmonton to start my first year of university. I was flipping through the “Edmonton Journal” and came across an ad for “Can’t Buy Me Love”. I thought about going to see it yet again, but other things ended up taking precedent.

Parting thoughts
“Can’t Buy Me Love” was the right movie at the right time for me. The premise may sound fantastic and out of the ordinary. However, the movie itself captures that teen angst of just wanting to fit in, make friends, and get the attention of the girl you like.

Most of the other teen angst, coming of age movies that really resonated with me came from the imagination of John Hughes. This one and “The Karate Kid” are the exceptions.

But, you put them all together, and they accurately capture the feelings of the teenager in the ‘80s.

Well, at least this one.