License To Drive

License To Drive

1988

Dir; Greg Beeman

"Some Guys Get All The Brakes"

One Corey drives the other Corey around in his grandfathers car for a bit.

"Its a long complicated story" is how the main character describes the plot of this movie in one of License to Drive's final scenes. This is not true. Boy fails his driving test. Boy takes Dad's car anyway so that he can impress a girl. Car gets smashed up. No hilarity ensues. Throw in a passed out Heather Graham getting her boobs photographed against her will by Corey Feldman and you've got yourself a really shit movie!

License To Drive stars both Coreys, Haim and Feldman respectively, who were both huge stars at the time and also weird Hollywoodized best chums. Here they underact each other to terrible effect. Future Corpse, Corey Haim plays Les (who the hell calls a teenage character Les?), a tedious, over confident ass monkey who has life really hard because he has to put up with the school bus and his parents incessant lift giving. He needs his own ride, but first he needs a driving license. Unfortunately his amazingly confident attitude is not backed up by any skill or ability so he fails his driving test (could this be a metaphor for both Corey's actual lives? Well done Mr Beeman... Here, have some regular TV work). This does not leave him with much chance of dry humping the girl of his dreams because guys without wheels are lame-o dude.

Les' best friend, Dean, unabley portrayed by Corey Feldman, is possibly an even bigger douche than his best bud. He calls a geek a "spasticated idiot" and refuses to take off his Blues Brothers Sunglasses indoors. Feldman appears to have accidentally gone half-retard for his portrayal of Dean, who, I'm pretty sure was written to be played straight. He must have figured that Rain Man was actually being portrayed as a cool leading man and decided to steal Tom Cruise's best moves. The only thankful thing about Dean is that he has surprisingly little screen time for the first half of the movie. 

Sadly, the same can not be said of the other Corey brother who is all over this hunk of Hollywood pant dirt. He goes for a drive with his embarrassing father (Richard Masur), spots Heather Graham and gets a hard-on. He pleads with his Dad to let him drive the car and manages to talk hm into letting him give her a lift. He does a weird half jump, half body pop round the back of the car to celebrate whilst his Dad watches proudly from across the street. He drives her home and arranges a date. She seems impressed despite the fact that the cool new ride has a personalized number plate that reads "GRANDPA".

Dean belches loudly into an intercom to impress Les' sister.

Every sentence uttered by every character in this film seems to refer to driving in some way. The girl Les wants to stink finger is named Mercedes for christ sake! Les lies to his friends and parents and tells them he has passed his test so that he can arrange a date with Mercedes, unfortunately for him Mum and Dad discover the ruse before he leaves and ground him for his deception. Les has already spent time making mix tapes for the journey called "Mercedes Date - Fast Songs" and "Mercedes Date - Make Out Songs" and he is not about to let all that hard work go to waste so he waits until his heavily pregnant mother and heavily moustachioed father are asleep and then sneaks out with the car.

He takes Mercedes to a hipster synth club where she meets up with her ex boyfriend, another sleazy grease ball who shows further evidence of the fact that Mercedes has a really bad taste in men. Maybe that was a clever ploy by the film makers to make the audience believe that she would be willing to stoop to the low standards of Corey Haim's girl arms. The sleaze ball has found a new woman which doesn't sit well with Mercedes who proceeds to get drunk on Champagne. Time is burnt with twists that don't go anywhere (the car is towed, then it isn't towed, They go to a make out spot but Les doesn't get so much as a hand job, Mercedes dances on the car and ruins the paintwork, then its fixed, the car skids all over the road but luckily stops in a parking space etc). They pick up Dean and one of his geeky friends. Respectfully, when Mercedes passes out from the booze the gang decide to put her in the boot for safe keeping.

Luckily for the viewer, a drunk man briefly steals both the car and the movie in one fell swoop. As he's driving away with Corey's wheels, he lines up shots on the dash board. He attempts to steer whilst cutting up a lime to garnish his drink with before falling asleep at the wheel and smashing up the Les-mobile. Morning arrives and Les gets the car home. His father is so mad that he threatens to take away his baseball mit as punishment. There's no time for this harsh act, however, because Les' mum is about to shit out another Haim brother (just what the world fucking needs). Les uses the skills he has picked up during a night of illegal joyriding to reverse his mum all the way to the hospital (forward drive is "broken"). In the process he almost runs over a waiter with a lovely five o-clock shadow. Why doesn't someone with a license drive her? His fucking Dad is in the back seat! Well hell, then the film wouldn't have a redemptive happy ending would it, smart ass.

In all fairness, this film is probably exactly what you would expect from a nonsensical 80's mainstream two Corey's vehicle (shit I've started with the car references myself now) so its difficult to complain too much about its content. However, this movie really has very little to offer. Its as if the film makers thought that a couple of half assed car chases and a jail bait Heather Graham wearing various porn starlet outfits was going to be enough to keep our attention for 90 minutes. It didn't work. The film is topped off by a horrible soundtrack filled with mid-paced throwaway bore-jams including a final scene fade out to "Get Out Of My Dreams (And Into My Car)" by corporate race traitor, Billy Ocean. The worst crime against music opens the film however, as a band called the Breakfast Club (seriously?) perform a cover of "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" which is so bad it would even make Paul McCartney blush and he's the worlds most shameless man. Oh, and yes, even all the songs in this movie refer to cars, (we get Jane Weidlins "Rush Hour" too so its not all bad) otherwise how would the viewer remember what this fucking mess is all about?

Its sad to think that by 1988 both of these, still teenage, stars were already showing signs of what was to come in their futures, ie. addiction and obscurity. Both of them vomit out dead eyed, half assed performances that should have put them both to shame. Haim, who is undoubtedly the star here, seems to have two acting moves; the open mouthed, overly dramatic chewing gum chew and a strange happy smile followed by too cool to smile bemusement face (see the scene in the Lost Boys where his brother suggests his Grandpa smokes weed for an explosion of this move). Neither of these are effective. Luckily Haim's greatest moments were not entirely behind him as two years later he would put a great deal more effort into his starring role in the excellent, "Prayer Of The Rollerboys" before his life and career really disintegrated.

Feldman, on the other hand, was as good as finished. He would have a small part in Joe Dante's "the Burbs" the following year (great film but his performance stank of alcoholism and despair) but otherwise Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and obscurity were all that could be seen in his future. The pair of them teamed up again in 1989 for the terrible "Dream A Little Dream" and more recently (and far more depressingly) for a reality TV series. By the time this TV show was made both had been through various combinations of addiction, failed German-based pop careers, shit movie choices, no movie options, internet hair selling, mental illness, Jason Stratham vehicles and terrible Lost Boys sequels. Any future plans for them were cut short by Haim's premature death in 2010. As sad as his death is, the upshot was that it halted plans to produce a sequel to License to Drive called License to Fly in which the Corey's would reunite for more hilarity, this time piloting a plane. Who's fucking idea was that? Two crack faced 40 year old's learn to fly a plane? Is Hollywood that desperate?

Yes.