Secret Admirer

One of the reasons I love the teen sex comedy genre of the 80's is that a lot of them had a sweet, naive charm to them. A lot of them came off as more innocent than smutty. One of those was the 1985 comedy Secret Admirer.

In this modern retake of Cyrano De Bergerac, C. Thomas Howell stars as a Michael, a high school senior who receives a love letter from a secret admirer on the last day of school. He's totally convinced that it's from his crush Deborah, Kelly Preston. It's actually from his best friend Toni, Lori Laughlin, who wants to keep her identity as the notes author a secret. She convinces Michael to write Deborah back and tells him she will deliver it to her. She takes a peek his letter to her, which is awful, and spruces it up, which ends up landing him a date. This leaves Toni heartbroken.

Meanwhile, the two letters mistakingly end up in the hands of the parents of Michael and Deborah, leading to thoughts of infedility, untrust, and mistken identity.

The three leads, especially Laughlin, are all really good. Fred Ward steals the show however as Deborah's over protective dad. Writer and director David Greenwalt does a good job in his directorial debut. And the score was composed by Jan Hammer, who was huge at the time for his music from Miami Vice.

This is a fun comedy that I like to rewatch every few years.

It's available on dvd and blu ray.