CAN'T HARDLY WAIT [1998]

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Three years prior to Josie & The Pussycats, Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont wrote and directed Can't Hardly Wait, a little beauty about a big party following Graduation.  (HERC has attended numerous high school graduation ceremonies, including his own, and none of them occurred during daylight hours.  How about you?)  The film is smart, charming and ultimately satisfying, a heartfelt homage to  the John Hughes teen films of the Eighties.

An American Graffiti for a new generation and the new millennium, Can't Hardly Wait shares several similarities with that classic film including fortuitous casting of many actors on their rise to fame; music integrated into virtually every scene and a radio station storyline involving Barry Manilow. (Okay, it was Wolfman Jack in Graffiti but you get the point. If they made the movie today, there would be no radio component - maybe a social network and video sharing site.  Sad.)

One note about the cast: Charlie Korsmo, who was tapped to play the role of geek "William Lichter" after the original choice was let go, joined the movie after principle photography had commenced and it would prove to be his final role.  He earned a physics degree from MIT, worked in missile defense for a time before going back to school and getting his Juris Doctor (law degree?) from Yale Law School.  

Kris King, over at Hatched, takes the comparisons and similarities even further and classifies both movies as Time Capsule Party Movies, films that follow "a diffuse cast of young characters over a 24 hour period, with greater stress on tone and a sense of place than a traditional over-arching plot. These are films with a strong track record of casting bright, untapped talent and have a penchant for killer soundtracks."  HERC could not agree more but wishes to lodge a teeny, tiny quibble with King's choice of Do The Right Thing over Sixteen Candles as the representative film for the Decade known as the Eighties in the newly named and clearly defined teen sub-genre.  Make no mistake, HERC loves, recommends and respects Spike Lee's joint but would never watch it along with the other four films in a Hideaway Movie Marathon which would go a little something like this:

The Sixties - American Graffiti

The Seventies - Dazed and Confused

The Eighties - Sixteen Candles

The Nineties - Can't Hardly Wait

The 2000s - Superbad

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And although it's thematically different, HERC might be tempted to throw in Easy A instead of Superbad.  Ahh, now he sees how King slotted Do The Right Thing in.  HERC proposes an alternate version of the teen Movie Marathon - mix & match among yourselves and submit your suggestions:

The Sixites

Hollywood Knights

The Wanderers

Cooley High

Grease

The Seventies

Over The Edge

Little Darlings

The Eighties

Do The Right Thing

The Last American Virgin

Adventureland

Fast Times At Ridgemont High

Heathers

Risky Business

The Nineties

10 Things I Hate About You

Empire Records

Clueless

House Party

The 2000s

Easy A

Get Over It

The Girl Next Door

I Love You, Beth Cooper

Napoleon Dynamite

The New Guy

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But let's not kid ourselves, we gather together nearly every Friday here at the Hideaway not to watch a film or talk about movies (although we invariably do that, too) - we gather together to listen to the songs featured on a film's soundtrack.  In the case of Can't Hardly Wait, there are more than 40 [!] songs featured within the movie yet the officially released soundtrack album features only a third of them.

"Graduate" - Third Eye Blind

"Can't Get Enough of You Baby" - Smash Mouth

"Dammit" - Blink-182

"I Walked In" - Brougham

"Turn It Up (remix)/Fire It Up" - Busta Rhymes

"Hit 'Em Wit Da Hee" (remix) - Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott (featuring Lil' Kim and Mocha)

"Swing My Way" (Radio Edit) - K.P. and Envyi

"Flashlight" - Parliament

"It's Tricky" - Run-D.M.C.

"High" - Feeder

"Tell Me What to Say" - Black Lab

"Farther Down" - Matthew Sweet

"Can't Hardly Wait" - The Replacements

"Umbrella" - Dog's Eye View

"Paradise City" - Guns N' Roses

The very first song heard in the movie is the third single from Eve 6's self-titled debut album, a pretty little ditty titled "Open Road Song".  Right out the gate, the pace is set and the race is on.  Their first single "Inside Out", which shows up later in the movie, is also highly recommended.

For the flashback sequence involving Jennifer Love-Hewitt and frosted strawberry Pop Tarts, we get the retro-pop of Smash Mouth's "Walkin' On The Sun".  The band also cover the similar-sounding "Can't Get Enough Of You Baby" on the soundtrack.

This one's always been a favorite of HERC's and there is a very good chance he's featured it here on the Hideaway before.  In the movie, the song is featured as a morning-after song, as the characters reunite for breakfast.  The original song is short and sweet but there is an extended remix out there by legendary remixer Tom Moulton that is almost twice as long.  Listen to it HERE.

Another song that has likely been featured on the Hideaway before.  (HERC offers no apologies - the song is that good! - but someone somewhere should be keeping track of such things.)  In Can't Hardly Wait, "Only You" plays as the protagonist is confronted by his dream girl as he's about to board a train bound for a Vonnegut workshop.  It should go without saying but HERC is gonna lay it out there anyway - he ends up catching a later train so he can spend some time with the girl.

The Can't Hardly Wait official soundtrack album is available on Spotify - now with email sign up! - so HERC took that, rounded up most of the other songs featured in the movie and then sequenced the playlist so it plays in the order the songs appeared in the film.