You’ve seen, I’m sure, numerous movies about teen angst. Every other movie from Hollywood seems to be about it. But they are full of cliches, bagging chicks, and bad humor. They have about as much intelligence as a fart joke.
Pump Up the Volume is different, practically transcendent for the genre. Christian Slater gives his best performance as a teenage shock-jock on a pirate radio station who exposes the seedy, corrupt underbelly of life in banal, hypocritical middle America.
Slater’s character, “Hard Harry,” mixes juvenile jokes with political and social satire, proving mesmerizing to suburban kids in cardboard cutout communities. Of course, the injection of truth into a land ruled by lies leads to a massive reaction from parents, the school principal and even the feds.
The movie also touches on the issues of teen suicide, school testing and the freedoms that our society is supposed to represent but rarely does. What is the ideal of free speech if the minute you exercise it, the government comes down on you like a giant hammer?….
Cast
- Christian Slater as Mark Hunter
- Samantha Mathis as Nora Diniro
- Mimi Kennedy as Marla Hunter
- Scott Paulin as Brian Hunter
- Cheryl Pollak as Paige Woodward
- Annie Ross as Loretta Creswood
- Ahmet Zappa as Jaime
- Billy Morrissette as Mazz Mazzilli
- Seth Green as Joey
- Robert Schenkkan as David Deaver
- Ellen Greene as Jan Emerson
- Andy Romano as Mr. Murdock
- Anthony Lucero as Malcolm Kaiser
- Lala Sloatman as Janie
- James Hampton as Arthur Watts