I came across this one last night while scrolling through Tubi. It’s the first time I’ve seen it since probably 1988 or so. People, get ready.
Hiding Out is a 1987 film starring Jon Cryer, who made a splash the year before as “Duckie” in the John Hughes film Pretty In Pink (1986). In Pretty In Pink, Cryer plays a hopeless nerd who is in love with a high school girl, only to watch her fall in love with another boy. Just a year later, he takes a role where he plays 29-year-old stockbroker Andrew Morenski who hides from the mob by pretending to be in high school.
Morenski, along with fellow brokers Ahern and Rodriguez (the latter played by the late actor Ned Eisenberg, who had a great turn the same year as Dan “The Man” Levitan in the Robin Williams vehicle Good Morning Vietnam), inadvertently became money launderers for the mob. They agree to testify for the feds, but the mob hires a gunman who kills Rodriguez in his sleep. Morenski is taken into federal custody by Agent Bakey (played by the late great John Spencer of “West Wing” fame). The gunman, who couldn’t look more incidentally evil with his trenchcoat and Eddie Munster hairdo, guns down the agents in a diner, forcing Morenski on the run alone. He makes it to Delaware, where he shaves his beard and dyes the sides of his head blonde (fucking what? Why didn’t he do the whole thing?) and enrolls as new student Maxwell Hauser (a name he comes up with while looking at a coffee can) in the same high school as his teenage cousin, Patrick (played by Keith Coogan, of both Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead (1991) – dude had a lot of onscreen experience being babysat).
Okay, now we’re set up – let the antics begin.
Max mouths off to an obnoxiously horrible teacher who tries to tell her class President Richard Nixon was framed (he wasn’t), only to be shut down with “this is my class, and I’ll decide what the facts are”. Ughh. I hope teachers like this don’t really exist, but if they do, it certainly helps explain flat-earthers. This rebellion against tyranny endears Max to the student population – he becomes popular overnight, and is even forced into running for class president. Way to keep a low profile, “guy on the run from murderers”.
Then, he decides to go ahead and date a high school girl, because fun. He picks up Ryan Campbell, played by then 15-year-old Annabeth Gish (who appeared with our beloved Bill Paxton in The Last Supper (1995) and went on to play President Bartlett’s eldest daughter on “The West Wing“). After one date, they fall in love. Of course they do.
Let’s pause on this. He’s 29, a Cornell University graduate and a successful businessman. And one date with a high school girl, and he’s in love. Now, Gish is 15 playing 17, while Cryer is 21 playing 29. In real life, they aren’t too far apart, but the writers deliberately stretch the age gap as far as plausibility will allow. The script spends more time letting him practice roller skating in the empty high school and drinking hooch with the janitor than it does developing the relationship between “Max” and Ryan. Dude, he’s just, like, so in love.
Whatever.
The film climaxes with the announcement of class president, which evil teacher has rigged but the students come out for Max anyway. Then the gunman absurdly tries to take out Max/Andrew in front of the whole school, misses, then the students chase him up into the gym rafters and force him to fall to his death. This whole scene is incredibly stupid, and seems like the writer was trying to wrap up the ending the night before the script was due. This is a professional hitman, and he decides the best thing is to try to take his mark out in the highest risk area possible. He could have just popped him a block from school two hours later from the comfort of his car, but no. Let’s have us a spectacle.
Andrew goes on to testify and enters witness relocation, where he stalks Ryan to her college and once again enrolls as a fellow student named “Eddie Collins”. Of course, they make out again, but now it’s legal. Happy ending, credits roll.
I’m not sure how well a script would sell today about a love relationship between a 29-year-old man and a high school girl. Following a thousand school shootings, the scene of the gunman just walking into a high school with a high-powered sniper rifle is certainly less plausible today. Would that have even happened in the 80’s?
This is a trite and very dated romantic comedy with a ridiculous script that is helped by some charming acting. Helped, but not saved.
