Ah, the ’80s. A time when everyone thought day-glo was a lifestyle, Aqua Net was a personality trait, and plot was something only old people worried about. Enter Modern Girls, a movie that wants desperately to be After Hours with lipstick but ends up feeling more like Saved by the Bell: The Clubbing Years—minus the charm, minus the tension, and minus anything resembling a point.
You know you’re in trouble when a film about nightlife feels like it was directed by someone who’s never stayed up past 10 PM.
The Premise: Girls Just Wanna… Wander Around?
The movie centers on three young women—Cece (Cynthia Gibb), Margo (Daphne Zuniga), and Kelly (Virginia Madsen)—who live together in a slightly sticky-looking apartment in Los Angeles and decide to go out clubbing for the night. That’s it. That’s the whole plot.
Well, okay, there’s a mix-up involving a blind date, a nerdy guy who looks like your older brother’s substitute teacher (Clayton Rohner), and a sleazy European rock star (also Clayton Rohner, pulling double duty like it’s a school play). The girls bounce from club to club in what can only be described as a low-stakes odyssey of flat dialogue and half-baked chemistry. It’s The Odyssey if Homer had done an eight ball and said, “Screw it, let’s write about dancing.”
The Women: Flat Characters in High Heels
You’d think with three leads, the film could muster at least one compelling character. Instead, we get a cynical brunette, a flirty blonde, and a “sensible one” who’s basically a stand-in for the audience, blinking in confusion and wondering why she agreed to be in this mess.
Virginia Madsen, bless her, is the only thing worth watching—mainly because she’s got the kind of face that distracts you from the dumpster fire of dialogue. Daphne Zuniga, fresh off The Sure Thing, somehow looks like she’s already regretting this paycheck. And Cynthia Gibb? She’s there. She speaks. That’s about all we can say.
The Men: One Actor, Two Personalities, No Point
Clayton Rohner plays both Cliff—the boring, well-meaning guy in pleated khakis—and Bruno X, the Eurotrash synth-rock star with an accent that should’ve been tried at The Hague. This dual role is supposed to be funny or insightful, I guess. It’s neither. It’s like watching a low-budget Parent Trap where nobody wins.
By the end, you wish both of his characters would just trip into a vat of mousse and vanish.
The Dialogue: Coked-Up Hallmark Cards
The script is a landfill of bad one-liners and “quirky” exchanges that feel like they were written on cocktail napkins between bumps in a bathroom stall. Nobody talks like this. Not even in the ’80s. And that’s saying something, because the ’80s gave us the Transformers movie, and that thing had Orson Welles voicing a robot planet.
The Cinematography: Neon and Regret
Visually, the film is trying so hard to be edgy it pulls a muscle. There are fog machines, flashing club lights, and enough teal to qualify as an Eyeshadow Warehouse promotional reel. Every scene is lit like a nightclub’s restroom mirror—harsh, disorienting, and full of poor decisions.
The clubs don’t even look fun. They look like the kind of places where the floors are permanently sticky, the DJ is asleep at the booth, and the bartender hates your face.
The Music: Synth and Sadness
There’s a lot of music, most of it forgettable. One of the clubs plays a song that sounds like a Casio keyboard being assaulted by a feral cat. There’s even a spontaneous lip-sync scene that’s so awkward it makes High School Musical look like Singin’ in the Rain.
The Message: Be Young, Be Dumb, Be Aimless?
If Modern Girls is trying to say something about female friendship, nightlife, or the existential dread of being twenty-something in L.A., it fails. It just kind of wanders around with the girls, waiting for something interesting to happen. Spoiler: it never does.
The ending isn’t even an ending—it’s just a mercy killing. The sun comes up, everyone goes home, and the credits roll like a sigh of relief.
Final Thoughts: Who Is This For?
This film might appeal to nostalgia junkies who miss the aesthetic of acid-washed jeans and pastel blazers, or people who think Jem and the Holograms was a documentary. But if you’re looking for substance, tension, or a reason to care, you’re in the wrong discotheque.
Modern Girls isn’t a movie—it’s an 80-minute mixtape of bad decisions, weak characters, and flat soda masquerading as champagne. It wants to sparkle, but it fizzles out like a glowstick at 6 a.m.
Final Score: 1 out of 5 spilled wine coolers. Worth watching only if your remote breaks and you’ve lost the will to live.
