Over the Edge (1979)

(On Cable TV, June 2022) Teenage rebellion has long been a Hollywood staple, but I can see why it would take until the late 1970s to make something as glum as Over the Edge. Taking place in a synthetic Colorado town made for ever-growing property values and not much else, the film doesn’t waste time showing the teenage alienation coming from having nothing to do except petty vandalism. Troublingly enough for this middle-aged house-owning film critic, the film squarely takes the teenagers’ side, all the way to an extreme escalation of hooliganism. By the time the parents come together for a community meeting and spend their time talking about house resale value and not the state of their kids, well, we’re ready for the kids to lock them up inside the school and set fire to cars outside –which they do. That’s kind of the nihilistic point Over the Edge makes about its aimless teenage protagonists. (It’s enough to make you thankful for cell phones and video games.)  In presenting such a sympathetic portrait of its vandal teenage characters, Over the Edge doesn’t make for comfortable viewing even today – it’s an indictment of adult inaction more than the semi-hypocritical depiction of teenagers acting badly that had been Hollywood’s stock-in-trade until then. It remains a remarkably glum assessment of American ready-made suburbia in its violence-stirring ennui.