The ‘80s in 40: The Sure Thing (March 1, 1985)

The ‘80s in 40 revisits the decade of the 1980s choosing four movies a year, one from each quarter. This entry covers the first quarter of 195.

In March of 1985, moviegoers could take in a double feature of movies made by lifelong friends Albert Brooks and Carl Reiner that seemed to be in conversation with one another. In Lost in America, a film he directed and co-wrote with frequent collaborator Monica Johnson, Brooks co-stars with Julie Hagerty as, respectively, David and Linda Howard, ’60s idealists who’ve become materialistic ’80s yuppies—seemingly without even realizing it. A career disappointment prompts David to emulate his big-screen Easy Rider heroes and hit the road with Linda at his side—in a Winnebago rather than motorcycles, but wasn’t the spirit in the same?

While they headed east in a fuzzy attempt to reclaim the ideals of their youth, the protagonists of Rob Reiner’s second film, The Sure Thing, headed west on a journey that would become far more meaningful by its conclusion than they believed it to be at the outset. While David and Linda were looking in middle age for the America they once dreamed they might live in some day, the kids of The Sure Thing were trying to figure out how they’d fit into the one they were about to inherit. 

As The Sure Thing opens, high school senior Walter “Gib” Gibson (John Cusack) has started to wonder if his best years are already behind him, using sex as a yardstick. Where his underclassmen years were quite active on this front, he has stalled out as a senior. (That he’s adopted pickup lines like “How would you like to have a sexual encounter so intense it could conceivably change your political views?” might not help.) It will take a new acquaintance and a cross-country trek to make him realize he’s looking for something more than sex.