For some it’s not too hard to believe that Patrick Dempsey has always been someone that women desire, but back in the 80s he was more of a skinny kid that was kind of awkward-looking and was considered by some to be one of the luckiest men alive since the movie Loverboy was, without a doubt, a teenage fantasy. Like many such movies back in the day it wasn’t entirely believable since the whole idea of becoming a male escort in your teens and being able to woo and please so many women that were in need of male company wasn’t a firm reality. Instead it was something you might have read about in Penthouse, meaning it was more fiction than anything, and would have seen in the movies but almost never in real life. Plus, the idea that it was amusing and funny and didn’t turn into a homicide case or something even uglier meant that it was a subtle dig at the kind of fantasy that many young men would have gladly entertained in their day. Dempsey’s character was the typical slacker that didn’t seem to have any drive or ambition when it came to life and was subsequently cut off from college by his parents, who forced him to move home and get a job instead.
As the story goes he did get a job delivering pizzas from a curiously named establishment named Senor Pizza, a pizza place with a vaguely Mexican demeanor that sounds kind of ironic in a way but also kind of silly. That being what it is he still lucked out somehow when an older woman saw something in him that was to her liking and started treating him like her boy toy, basically buying him clothes and entering into a lurid affair with him. When she had to return to Italy however other women caught on to this and started ordering a pizza with “extra anchovies” which was code for what they really wanted. The cast of this movie was kind of impressive since Kirstie Alley and Carrie Fisher were a part of it, playing women that required Dempsey’s character and his ‘services’ as a male escort of sorts. What was really funny though, in an eyebrow-raising sort of way, is that his character had a girlfriend in college and was still cheating on her while thinking it was okay since he was learning so much about women and would know just how to please her when he finally got back to college.
Of course this kind of thing would breed jealousy once it was found out, and eventually things came crashing down when Dempsey was cornered by the husbands of the women he’d been sleeping with. Funnily enough however one of them recognized him as the son of one of his buddies and recalled Dempsey’s father saying that he was worried about his son being gay. Yes, back then your son being gay was still considered comedy gold but wasn’t as subject to such intense scrutiny. Anyway, matters only grew worse when Dempsey’s girlfriend was alerted to the fact of what he’d been doing, and of course became very hurt and had to think on whether or not she would be continuing the relationship. In the end things went back to what they were as it was discovered that Dempsey’s character wasn’t gay, and that as well as he was doing for himself he would be better off in college. So in the end his father sends him back and it’s assumed that everything was okay from then on.
Let’s just say you probably wouldn’t be able to see this movie being made in the current era since like so many 80s movies there seems to be a stigma that’s risen in the last couple of years concerning the content. It’s saddening in a way to see people rip into movies like this for the content and to say things like “you can’t do that now!” or “that’s misogynistic” or anything else they want to shout in their high-pitched, nails on a chalkboard voice. You know why movies like Loverboy were the greatest and why 80s movies were and still are so popular? There was a definite lack of social conventions within a lot of movies that made them thoroughly enjoyable and a lot easier to watch since we weren’t being made to feel bad about this or that or the other thing. These movies were great because we knew what was going on was fantasy, but we didn’t care. It was entertainment, not a political statement and certainly not an intent to harm anyone or their reputation. The 80s were great because the movies were allowed to do so much more and just be completely off the wall if they chose to be that way.
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