The Allnighter (1987)

"We're cool. We have each other." - Molly

A group of friends are graduating college, but on their final night they want to party and find romance.
Starring: Susanna Hoffs, Dedee Pfeiffer, Joan Cusak, John Terlesky

Link to IMDB

The gang

Molly, Val and Gina are best friends at college, but the last day on campus has them anxious about the fun times ending and adult life beginning. Gina is making a film project to document everyone's experiences of the past few years, and she always has a crappy camcorder with her to interview other students. The girls also hang out with a couple of surfer dudes at school, CJ and Killer.

Not much happens for awhile, but there's some goofing around to keep things lively and everyone keeps talking about an upcoming Fiesta Party. Molly has a crush on an older man but CJ's also trying to be romantic with her, and we also meet Val's fiancee who is a real turd. Gina's busy working on that film project, so there's always something dumb going on with her. It's pretty basic stuff until the second half, when the girls get wrongly arrested for prostitution!


After the debauchery of the Fiesta Party, wacky events at a hotel lead to some misunderstandings and Gina and Val end up in jail for the night while Molly has to find bail to get them out. The adventures with the police seem like they could be fun, but it's mostly wasted potential. I'm guessing the script was written during an allnighter and never edited afterwards.

Will they, or won't they ?!

"Love means never having to say you're loaded." - Killer

All the characters themselves are probably the best element, and there are lessons on love, life and surfing to be found. Even when CJ and Killer are being airheads they remain likeable, and are not just the typical male jerks that appear in college movies. Actually, the subplot about the guys friendship changing is often more interesting than what the girls are up to!
The plot disappears and reappears at random, but it's not all bad and was fun enough to be entertaining with a few pina coladas.

Be sure not to miss:
- There's Pam Grier as the police sergeant.
- Lasagna party!
- I almost didn't recognize Michael Ontkean without a cowboy hat, but boy does he have some wacky dance moves.
- Killer got so stoned he thought he was a seal??

Internet review:
"Maybe you don't need any brains to understand this movie but must life always be so serious?" - natasch

Should I watch it?
It's okay, but other movies did it better.

Where can I find it?
On YouTube, but the sound cuts off during two songs. No dialog is missed, but if you really want to hear it uninterrupted the one link here does work but the video quality sucks.

The Allnighter gets...