Risky Business (1983)

The film is one of the smartest, funniest, most perceptive satires in a long time and a great comedy about teenage sex. Brickman’s sharp dialogue and the strong casting of Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay create original insights into guilt, greed, and lust.

The review celebrates the film as both a satire of consumerism and an example of it, praising Brickman's nuanced handling of class, race, and sex through the relationship between Joel and Lana while highlighting the atmospheric noir elements and empathetic character work that distinguish it from typical 1980s teen comedies. The restoration is called revelatory for revealing the film's formal ambition.

The critic sees the film as a coming-of-age story about a teen discovering desire and capitalism after hiring a call girl and turning his home into a brothel. It singles out the contemplative mood created by the Tangerine Dream score and the way the protagonist realizes his soul is at stake amid material pursuits.

The critic lauds Brickman's only two features as worthy of the pantheon, crediting the director with reinventing the teen sex comedy by infusing it with the formal and thematic sophistication of Godard and Bertolucci rather than relying on Porky's-style gags. The piece singles out the film's stylistic ambition and Cruise's star-making turn for particular praise in the context of its Criterion release.

A bright comedy in which Tom Cruise turns his parents' home into a brothel; Brickman delivers a sharp satire on American go-getting that turns into a near-tragedy of class collisions.

The film is a glossy comedy of embarrassment that teeters permanently on the brink of stark disaster, recalling The Graduate. Good performances from Cruise and De Mornay stand out.

The critic describes the film as a strangely affecting mix of frat-house hi-jinks and philosophical treatise, calling it Ferris Bueller with an existential crisis. Tom Cruise's performance is singled out for making the character credible and marking a star's birth, though the attempt to balance juvenile antics with deeper themes is seen as overly ambitious.

The critic examines Tom Cruise's star-making turn as Joel in Paul Brickman's 1983 satire of Reagan-era ambition and materialism, noting how the film and performance already hint at Cruise's later reflexive, anxious persona. It singles out the kinetic energy, Bruce Surtees photography, and Tangerine Dream score while contrasting the released upbeat ending with Brickman's darker original.

The film is like a promising first novel with stylistic talent on display. Brickman can be accused of trying to have it both ways by endorsing the bottom line while delivering a stylish debut.

The critic finds the first fifteen minutes lively and offbeat but judges the rest overdeliberate, glossy, and vacuous, with a thin situation and control-freak direction that turns the material into soft-core fantasy without incidental pleasures or real characters. It singles out Rebecca De Mornay's distinctive, calculating Lana as the only trace of individuality amid the film's stale satirical take on American affluence.

Brickman’s film shows an abundance of style but focuses on a hero whose problems hold little interest to the wider world. It mixes satire, suburban poetry, and shameless showing off with uneven results, though some fresh moments stand out.

The critic views the film as a wish-fulfillment fantasy of white male teenage desire that largely endorses rather than satirizes its protagonist's values. Cruise's performance as the out-of-his-depth Joel provides the main source of humanity and contrast to the character's later confident persona.