Over the Edge
Director: Jonathan Kaplan
Year Released: 1979
Rating: 2.5
Kids in a planned community, because their Mommies and Daddies don't "love them enough" and the only thing they have to keep themselves occupied is a dinky rec room, go batshit insane, rebelling against their confinement by taunting and assaulting the police, doing drugs (take acid! stare at a Hieronymus Bosch painting!), drinking heavily, engaging in sexual activity and eventually starting a full-scale riot. The performances by the kids are memorable and the script makes a good point about parents' permissiveness allowing for the poor behavior to escalate (if my Dad ever had to pick me up from a police station, I'd have been dead before I even left the building), though the movie shows entirely too much sympathy for the over-the-top hoodlums, placing the brunt of the blame on the adult figures (the depiction is severe and bordering on the hysterical). Sure, Ma and Pa aren't always the best, but since when did we ever forget about self-respect?
