Risky Business is a 1983 film written and directed by Paul Brickman. Considered a breakout film for actor Tom Cruise (in the role of Joel Goodson), the movie is about a suburban Chicago teenager. While his parents are on vacation, Joel sinks his father's Porsche 928 into Lake Michigan. To raise money for the repairs, Joel runs a brothel in his parents' Glencoe house.
The film also stars Rebecca De Mornay as Lana, Joe Pantoliano as Guido, Curtis Armstrong as Miles, Richard Masur as the Princeton University interviewer, and Bronson Pinchot as Barry.
The movie's iconic sequence is the one in which Cruise dances in his underwear to Bob Seger's song "Old Time Rock and Roll".
The film is considered to be a social and political satire by many critics. One critic went so far as to imply that Cruise's famous dance sequence was a metaphor for the loose period of freedom after the Vietnam war. Whatever the truth of this, the film as a whole is a very thorough look at the rites of passage of a young man becoming an adult. The film's cinematography and existentialist moments have been compared to the film American Beauty, with one critic calling Risky Business a sort of prequel.
Taglines:
- There's a time for playing it safe and a time for Risky Business.
- Meet the model son who's been good too long.
Quotes
"Sometimes you just gotta say 'What the fuck!'." Miles tells this to Joel early in the film, and Joel later says this to the interviewer from Princeton University.
Guido (to Joel): "In a sluggish economy, never ever fuck with another man's livelihood."
Trivia
