A Cautionary Tale Wrapped in a Comedy Wrapped in Amanda Peterson’s Smile
Back in 1987, America was swimming in teen comedies like it had no adult supervision. You couldn’t open a locker without knocking over a half-baked John Hughes clone. But Can’t Buy Me Love, somehow, pulled off the impossible: it dressed up in clichés, snuck into the cool kids’ table, and walked away with a little dignity—and a whole lot of Amanda Peterson glow.
Let’s get the setup out of the way: Ronald Miller (Patrick Dempsey, in his pre-McDreamy “greasy telescope club phase”) is a lawn-mowing nobody in suburban Arizona with telescope dreams and zero social currency. He’s tired of being invisible. Enter Cindy Mancini (Amanda Peterson), the impossibly pretty head cheerleader who looks like she just dropped out of a shampoo commercial to do your algebra homework.
After she ruins her mom’s expensive suede outfit (because white wine, irony, and the ’80s all age poorly), Ronald offers a solution: he’ll pay her $1,000 to pretend to date him for a month. Like a geeky Richard Gere with zero charisma and a leaf blower. She says yes—because this is 1987 and teen girls were apparently willing to sell their dignity for a dry-cleaning bill.
And then? Ronald becomes a legend. Not because of a makeover montage or a sudden growth spurt, but because the high school ecosystem is dumber than a Goldfish on Xanax. He changes his clothes, gets a slow-motion strut in the hallway, and the herd mentality kicks in. He goes from pizza-faced nobody to social savant faster than you can say “status anxiety.”
Amanda Peterson: The Angelic Middle Finger to the Entire Premise
Let’s talk about Amanda Peterson for a second.
She could’ve phoned this in. Most actresses would’ve. But there’s a sincerity to her performance as Cindy—she sells the heartbreak, the loneliness behind the blonde, the aching self-awareness that this whole thing is stupid but she’s in too deep to back out. It’s a star-making turn that feels almost too good for this movie. Her smile could melt asphalt. Her eyes do more in a single scene than the entire male cast does in 90 minutes.
This should’ve been the beginning of a Julia Roberts–level run. Instead, Peterson faded from Hollywood not long after, and her real-life story turned out far more tragic than her on-screen fairy tale. In that sense, Can’t Buy Me Love hits a little harder now—because for all its fluff, Peterson brought soul to a story that didn’t earn it.
Popularity as a Disease, High School as a Cult
Let’s not kid ourselves. The moral of the movie isn’t “be yourself.” It’s more like: “You can’t fake it forever, unless you’re rich or hot.” Ronald gets addicted to popularity like it’s a Schedule I narcotic. He ghosts his nerdy friends, wears pleated pants that make him look like a substitute P.E. teacher, and starts acting like the kind of guy who says “brah” without irony. His downfall is inevitable—and weirdly satisfying.
There’s a dark undercurrent here if you want to find it. The high school hierarchy is basically a gang initiation with better hair products. No one has real values, just groupthink and hormones. The adults are completely absent, because in the ’80s, every parent was off-screen having an affair or drinking wine coolers.
But for all that, Can’t Buy Me Love still works. Why? Because it’s honest about the delusions of adolescence. It doesn’t try too hard to make Ronald a saint. He’s a dork with ambition, then a sellout, then a guy who has to eat humble pie in front of the entire cafeteria. It’s the cycle of teen karma, and somehow, it feels earned.
Final Verdict: Rentable Romance with Bite
Can’t Buy Me Love is no masterpiece. It’s a formula teen flick wrapped in Reagan-era cynicism and soft-focus lighting. But it’s watchable as hell, and Amanda Peterson makes the whole thing feel like something more. It’s sweet, sour, and faintly tragic in retrospect.
If you grew up watching this on cable reruns, it’s probably tattooed into your brain between Ferris Bueller and Weird Science. If you’re watching it for the first time now, you’ll cringe at the wardrobe but stay for the strangely sharp social satire.
Just don’t try this in real life. Most popular girls won’t rent themselves out for a grand, and if they do, you’re probably on a list now.
Rating: 4 out of 5 suede outfits ruined by cheap white wine.
Watch it for Amanda. Stay for the train wreck. Leave with perspective.
