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Baby It's You (1983) More at IMDbPro »

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17 comments in total

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
If it's so bad, why can't I forget it?, 12 October 2005

Author: holisticgardener from United States

In spite of the negative review above I would say this is a good film and a story that may hang around in your mind for a long time. It isn't so much a "movie story," a la Meg Ryan romantic comedy type, as it is a slice of life. The characters in this movie are much more like the people you went to high school and college with than they are like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan! Life is messy and confusing and people change. People are attracted to the wrong people all the time. They make bad choices. They do things they can never forget. This movie reflects these human foibles and that is why it is a great small movie that got overlooked and under-appreciated.

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Pleasant diversion, nothing more, 29 November 2003
Author: KS-8 from California

Unlike other viewers, I didn't really connect with this on any major level. And I don't think their longing for each other was anything more than adolescent infatuation (hey, we've all been there!), made all the more desperate by separation anxiety. A couple of 18-year-olds struggling to find themselves in the world. OK as a romantic comedy drama, but no great shakes.

Performances were all solid. Interesting to see Matthew Modine pop up briefly as the college boyfriend. And it looked great -- nice and moody -- seemed like something out of the 1960s.

One thing bothered me: The use of Bruce Springsteen songs from the 1970s in a movie that was to have taken place in 1967 (not 1965, as another reviewer said -- the signs at Rosanna Arquette's prom clearly said, "Class of 1967"). Anyway, those Springsteen songs from the soundtrack wouldn't have been out yet. But I guess it was done to add a "Jersey feel" to the movie.

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5 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Probably one of the greatest love stories., 26 August 1999

Author: Rupert-15 from Madison, Wi

This is definitely one of my favorite romantic films. It's well acted, well written and well directed. Arquette and Spano's chemistry is wonderful. With the people I've talked to who have seen this film, there seems to be something personal that they can relate to the story. It's definitely not a happy movie, but I think that's what makes it really stick with you. It's starts out somewhat like a period romance you might have seen before. About midway through it takes a turn and may seem to lose momentum. This is what sets it apart from other romances. It has this unpredictability to it that some people might find unsatisfying. I have seen it several times and each viewing is fascinating. It is very rare that such a bittersweet marvel of a film comes along and even rarer that it gets the attention it deserves. One of John Sayles' finest.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
A Tale of Star Crossed Lovers for the Ages, 13 September 2007
Author: Snoopymichele from CT

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

*** Contains Spoilers***

I first saw this film in ninth grade 23 years ago, and fell in love with it as a teenage girl. I saw it again the other day, and loved it just as much. It's flat out a great movie, and the chemistry between Vincent Spano and Rosanna Arquette is palpable. These two fantastic actors bring a warmth and sensitivity to their characters who would be otherwise unlikeable if played by any other actors. Arquette's innocent beauty and Spano's edgy good looks are perfect for these roles.

When they meet in high school, Jill (Arquette) is a sheltered, pampered princess whose grand passion is acting in the school play. Sheik (Spano) is the new boy at school who sticks out like a sore thumb compared to all the schoolboys that Jill is surrounded by. His grand passion is Jill, and she's attracted to this dark and dangerous charmer. The fact that he's obsessive and volatile only make her more titilated, and when he kidnaps her and holds her and her friend at gunpoint (albeit it's an unloaded gun), she doesn't hesitate to date him again. Only later on in college does the experience come back to haunt her.

While in her freshman year, Jill finds herself in Sheik's shoes in the sense that she's an outsider in the crowd she's surrounded with up at school. In high school, she was a big fish in a small pond. At college, she's a little fish in a large pond. When she seeks him out in Miami Beach where he's attempting to break into show business in a seedy little club, she ends up sleeping with him all the while knowing that they have no future because he's not the kind of man she can see settling down with. He's too volatile and obsessive for her somewhat still innocent liking, and their personalities just don't mesh together for any real future together. He's old-school macho and she's a liberated pseudohippy.

The music is terrific-60's classics mixed with two of Jersey's finest, Springsteen and Sinatra that carry the storyline and add to the emotion of the film.

Breakout performances by both stars, with strong support from Tracy Pollan, Matthew Modine and Liane Curtis (in a one-eighty from her role as Molly Ringwald's best friend in Sixteen Candles). This film is a coming of age love story for the ages, and it absolutely stands the test of time. A 10 of 10!

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Under-appreciated Gem of a Movie, 31 December 2006

Author: vitaleralphlouis from United States

This wonderful movie, saddled by an awful title and a really bad first two minutes, played only one screen in Washington DC --- but my attention was called to it by critic Arch Campbell. Thank you, Arch.

Within five minutes the audience will be taken in to a love story, intensely heartfelt, between a Jewish A+ student and a smooth Italian greaser. This is the kind of love story which has slim chance of a happy outcome but slimmer chance that anything can dowse either the flame or the memory. Although technically a comedy, the serious under-theme is worthy of the great classics of European cinema; enhanced by true skill in framing the right scenes.

Many films are aimed at persons who view LOVE as pretty similar to attraction to a rented car; i.e. love what you've got, forget about what you ain't. This film isn't for them. If you've felt love's pain, see this one.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
The Best Film of 1983, 12 July 2005

Author: asc85 from Mercer County, NJ

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I saw this when I had just graduated college, and it was my first John Sayles movie. Along with "Return of the Secaucus 7", this was Sayles at his peak powers. Incredible dialogue. That was how I remembered high school, and that was how we spoke in high school. And I guess because I graduated college that year, I picked up on the theme of graduation, and having to move on in your life. One of the last scenes between Spano and Arquette was achingly real as they both seem lost trying to adjust to a new life in unfamiliar surroundings. When Spano tries to say, "In high school...", and Arquette cuts him off with tears in her eyes and screams, "we're not in high school, anymore", well, that's something I never forgot, as I'm playing that back for you now.

"The Big Chill" was good, but this was the best film of 1983.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Great movie, 10 February 2002
Author: karchad from Wisconsin

I echo the comments of the other review posted here. The movie seems very uneven, and that adds to its lure. The interaction of Spano and Arquette seems all at once real and surreal. Any movie which makes me think of it into the next day, must have significant substance. It is rare to consider "uneven" a positive quality to a movie, but somehow this one pulls it off..

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3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Poignant, sweet, heartbreaking journey into the past, 28 September 2006

Author: azweasel2 from United States

After finally getting a VHS copy of this film, I find it is ranked right up there with my all-time favorites. Perhaps you had to have lived in that time, or attended a big-city high school or just be an incurable romantic to relate.

Even though this film is 23 years old, the emotions, settings and tragedies of young, rudder-less love are universal and timeless. Is there any among we female viewers who has not either had or wanted to have a "Sheik" type pursue you? Dangerous, enigmatic and probably a big no-no, but extremely intriguing.

The film has many subtle nuances that younger audiences my not recognize since the scenes are not thrown at the viewer in quick-time, but the gentle, heart-wrenching moments with the main characters tend to stick in your mind. I will never listen to "Strangers in the Night" again without thinking of the two dance scenes and the emotions they evoke.

Spano and Arquette are outstanding as the two star-crossed leads and the acting is both understated and powerful in the same moment. When Jill tells Shiek she just doesn't love him in the dorm scene and he backs up and with a whipped look on his face asks, "why not?", his character is stripped of all pretenses.

Shop around for this video, as it is film making with heart like you don't find very often in the current film catalogs. Watch and remember and weep a little for what was and never could be.

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The ultimate fantasy of high school girls of the 1960's, 30 December 2003

Author: Fern Iva (fivak) from New York, NY

I always dreamed and fantasized about falling for a hood like Sheik. "Nice" girls who grew up in the 1960's and were in the honor society were supposed to achieve the questionable goal of marrying a nice boy who would earn well and buy us a nice house in the suburbs, where we would presumably have some nice children...

And this, in a word, is what lends "Baby, It's You" its poignancy. High school is the one place, the last place, in which the unlikely and all-too-temporary coupling of a female "achiever" bound for suburban "niceness" and the magnetic male "underachiever" bound for urban "unniceness" can occur. Sheik/Albert Capadilupo ("Is he an Arab?" "No, Italian.") embodies all the qualities that leader-type Jill Rosen has been told time and time again do not make a good, suitable husband or match or date: he disdains academic achievement, he is "good" with his hands, he drives fast, he has underworld connections, he knows how to kiss..and possibly how to do other things. Jill Rosen, in turn, has dreamy eyes, answers questions in class, gets good grades, and has ambitions of being something very much more than a "wife," qualities which fascinate and often infuriate Sheikh.

In the course of the movie, the on-again, off-again romance between them -which features all the quirkiness and unpredictability of most high-school romances, and then some- lights up, then sputters, then heats up again. My favorite movie scene of all time takes place when a sleepless maniacal Sheik barrels up US Route 1 from Miami in a series of stolen cars, then collars numerous shocked and amazed debutante types in the Student Center in order to locate Jill.

Free of sci-fi special effects or surrealistic flashbacks, this is a movie for people who love and believe in "romance" in the truest sense of the word - that one brief "Camelot"-like time when two people from different backgrounds and even worlds light up the world for each other, even though they sense it will end all too soon.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Great Writing Evokes 60's Clash of Cultures, 9 December 2005

Author: reneethorpe from Indonesia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Although I would have thought that this coming-of-age story had universal truths, I see enough negative comments that perhaps you've got to be a Baby-Boomer to love this film.

The dialog is spot-on, and the lead characters beautifully personify pre-Kennedy assassination America... an innocence that comes into conflict with the hippie-era political activism, drug exploration, and general upheaval of middle American values. There are actually so many interesting layers to this film, though, I can hardly go into all of them here.

Highly sensitive acting by all, one of Sayles' best.

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