Theme Song: Anytime you see “Soundtrack by” and “Tangerine Dream” next to one another you can be sure of three things: 1. The movie you are about to watch sucks and is going to be totally over the top 80s. 2. The soundtrack is going to fucking suck and be filled with annoying sax, bad synths, and atmosphere. 3. Cocaine was probably involved with the decision to include Tangerine Dream.

Interesting Dated References: Los Angeles being a place cool people are from and/or want to live.

Best Line: Arthur — “She’s slipping away from me!” Eli, in reply — “Then compromise.” Arthur then answers — “If I compromise then I’m you.” Later, said by an artist to Arthur — “You can’t paint or fuck.”

Social Context: So I know I keep ranting on and on about this, but it seems to keep happening … In Los Angeles in the 80s, a lot of scripts were written about relationships, which were penned by people high on cocaine. This is yet another one of those movies. you know how nowadays people do cocaine and “jam out some tunes” and get record contracts? Well take that same scenario and apply it to the 80s and the film industry and you get what was happening. “Coke Buddies” would sit down, write a script about some relationship BS, then get it made into a movie.

Summary: Peter Coyote has the best fucking voice of anyone ever of all time. In Heartbreakers, he plays a failed artist named Arthur, who works in a print shop. His girlfriend can’t commit to him because he is fiscally immature and preoccupied with his art. As a result, she meets ex-boyfriends for lunch which infuriates Arthur to no end. What a fucking shitty life. Arthur has a friend named Eli who is a successful businessman who wants nothing more than to be in a long-term relationship, but instead just fucks random chicks. What a fucking shitty life.

Okay, so now that the setup is all clarified, let’s move on. Arthur quits his print shop job and goes to Eli’s house to vent. Because Eli is a fucking whore, he has a topless chick on his bed. Because it’s Los Angeles, they all decide to go to Fatburger.

Look at the fucking interior of this fucking restaurant. It’s possibly the grossest thing I’ve ever seen and I saw that internet video where those chicks piss and shit all over each other. While at Fatburger, Arthur sees his girlfriend on a date with one of her exes, who is played by Detective Wojo from Barney Miller. The next day she moves out. Holy fuck, Coyote really gives her the what-for. He smacks her around and tells her she’s a whore who knows nothing about passion because she’s delusional. I can’t be certain but I think I just drank a bottle of wine in like ten minutes.

Look! It’s Peter Coyote and some chick with huge disgusting breasts reenacting that scene from Ghost! So Arthur gets an art show, Eli fucks up his dad’s business, and both go to an 80s party where Arthur yells at the Barney Miller ex-boyfriend.

Remember when women could wear baggy sweaters and it was considered sexy? That was disgusting. I was only five at the time, but I knew even then that it was gross. So Arthur and Eli pal around and take the baggy sweater girl (Carol Wayne, who died in a bizarre drowning accident the next year) to dinner, and then have a really awkward threesome with her. Really though, aren’t all threesomes awkward? People should just stop having them.

Eventually, Arthur goes to visit Barney Miller and they straighten things out. That’s very unrealistic. Then Arthur argues with Eli’s new art gallery-working girlfriend. The girlfriend is played by Carole Laure who was Miss Monde 1984 in Sweet Movie. Seeing her in a normal role is a little disorienting. Then all of a sudden Pat Benatar’s “Love Is A Battlefield” gets played during a disco dance scene sequence.

Arthur and Eli immediately get into an argument because Arthur danced with the art gallery chick. “Love Is A Battlefield” is still playing. Did you realize that during that song Benatar sings “touch me deep inside?” That’s sort of sexy. It’s even sexier that she has vanished from pop culture. That takes real integrity. So, Arthur and Eli decide they should play racquetball at like 3 am in front of the gallery working-chick, and then they get into a fist fight. Arthur and Eli make up and have a successful gallery show, I don’t know, what the fuck do you want from me. Then some more bullshit happens. The moral here is that even though Arthur goes on to great success, the girlfriend who left him is stuck with Barney Miller. And everything works out fine for Eli. And yes, I was having some camera issues during this fucking movie.

Poster and Box Art: It’s that same aesthetic that somehow lasted from 1985 to 1993. The Heartbreakers poster walks the same line as the Saved By The Bell intro. Computer generated patterns, squares, fluorescent colors, some weird type. Welcome to 1985. The real tragedy is that this style has seen a renaissance.

Availability: VHS as always. Can you believe this interview with director/writer Boby Roth in which he stated that if he could only watch three movies the rest of his life they would be: “Bertolucci’s ‘Last Tango in Paris,’ ‘De Sica’s ‘The Bicycle Thief,’ and my own film ‘Heartbreakers.’” Jesus.

Posted by srock on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 10:18 am. Filed under Early-Buddy Erotica, Unrealistic People Falling In Love