Wasted ‘Reardon’

Sheila Benson loved “A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon,” calling it an “utterly unexpected delight” (“ ‘Reardon’ Toast to Adolescence,” Feb. 26) and “brilliantly perceptive” (Critic’s Notes, March 6).

These are words I would not use to describe a film in which the hero lies to his sweetheart; takes repeated advantage of his best friend; meets a classmate once a week for a Jack the Ripper fantasy followed by sexual intercourse; has sex with his mother’s girlfriend; drives (after drinking alcohol) his parents’ car although he had been expected home hours earlier; commandeers the microphone at a formal dance to ad-lib bizarre poetry and sign off with a verbal obscenity; initiates (after further drinking) a high-speed car chase; engages in a fist fight that leaves him lying alone in the wet street; and wrecks his parents car after drag racing with the Chicago transit system.

Benson feels the movie is “far too good to be wasted on the young--the cast’s contemporaries who will probably devour it.” Benson further wrote that “A far more deserving audience are those who remember their own outrageousness at this age with equanimity and perhaps even bemusement. Will they have a picnic.”

Yeah, rain-soaked and bug-infested.

DIANA SAWYER MOLOY

Seal Beach