I watched Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home a scant three days after I saw Adventureland, and I could not help but be struck by the similarities between the two. Both were aimed squarely at the teenagers of their times, both aim for some degree of profundity (though this means something really different to each set of filmmakers) and both feature a budding romance between a geeky young man and a free-spirited young woman. I was as surprised as anyone to find that I liked Stewart a whole hell of a lot more.
Jon Cryer, the man who spent the better part of his popularity trying to recreate the success of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (a film that he did not appear in), portrays Morgan Stewart, a young hellion who (according to the back of the box) has been kicked out of 10 prep schools in the past seven years. After his latest incident, he is ordered home by his wealthy, conservative parents (Nicholas Pryor and Lynn Redgrave), only to find out once he’s there that they only want him there to perfect their family image for his father’s senatorial campaign, masterminded by arch-henchmen Jay Le Soto (Paul Gleason, the principal from The Breakfast Club). But this is the late 1980s meaning Jon Cryer needs to seem appealing to a wide audience if this is going to fly, so you can bet that he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve!
I’m not going to argue that this movie isn’t stupid. It has a few comedic set pieces that are enough to make your eyes roll (though if that’s all you do at a comedy these days, count yourself lucky) and the director (Paul Aaron) hated it so much that he took his name off and replaced it with the infamous “Alan Smithee” moniker. Aided immeasurably by Viveka Davis’s supporting turn as Emily, this movie manages to work up enough good-natured fun that I couldn’t help but like it. And I don’t even mean that in an ironic sense, as the marketing of this disc seems to want to prepare you for. I mean in a real, authentic sense.
While I enjoyed Adventureland (and I loved the soundtrack), I left a little disappointed at the boiler-plate predictability of the relationships. Alright, we’ve got our nerdy teenage lead Jesse Eisenberg (or Michael Cera, or Zach Braff, or whoever), who’s never been laid and is really awkward around girls. We’ve got our girl Kristen Stewart who’s a free spirit, but on the inside is really messed-up and needs our wimpy hero to help her. Stewart has roughly the same archetypes at work but at the same time is totally and utterly devoid of angst. Neither character is ever internally conflicted about anything or in the slightest bit embarrassed or ashamed of their counter-cultural tendencies (if you made a drinking game out of the number of old horror movie references this thing makes, you’d be out like a light by the end of the first act). While I can understand the need for emotionally honest work (it’s easy to see why people responded to Nirvana rebelling against all of this), I had never felt more like my generation had been programmed to never have fun than I did watching this.
While it would be easy to detach oneself from this and enjoy this in only an ironic sense, I feel like that would be kind of missing the point. If not a certain honesty, there’s at least a good spirit here that’s depressingly rare in a film landscape that seems to be constantly looking for new ways to make you depressed. Give it a shot. Trust me.
DVD Bonus Features
In addition to the film (presented in Full-Screen), the disc also has a trivia tack, which allows you to view small bits of trivia during the film, pop-up video style. It also has the original trailer.
"Morgan Stewart's Coming Home" is on sale April 14, 2009 and is rated PG13. Comedy. Directed by Alan Smithee. Written by Ken Hixon, David Titcher. Starring Jon Cryer, Paul Gleason, Nicholas Pryor, Lynn Redgrave, Viveka Davis.
