Leather Jackets

"Leather Jackets" is (probably) not the worst movie ever made; it only seems that way while you're sitting through it, wondering why you even bother while some sort of morbid fascination keeps you rooted in place as you tell yourself it can't get much worse -- even while it proceeds to do so. It's a movie that would have been right at home back in the good old days of the "troubled youth" B-films of the 50s (although they'd have had to clean up the language considerably); nobody really expected those films to make any sense or to bother with such amenities as plot coherence or character motivations. Sadly, however, time has marched on and D.B. Sweeney's Mickey is a moron (seven years he's carried a torch for Claudi and he's never noticed that she's the town punch?) while Cary Elwes' Dobbs is the sort of creature you instinctively want to step on (but only if you're not wearing your good shoes). Not much to root for between those two, and the most positive thing to be said for them is that the Vietnamese gangboys who are chasing them seem to be no better. Ironically, the only character who does prompt any real sympathy is Bridget Fonda's Claudi -- but even that's not enough once you find yourself wondering what the hell she's doing with these losers in the first place. All in all, a downer of a film, a downer of an ending, a downer of a way to waste a couple of hours . . .