Above: Previously on Straight Up.
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Chad tells the drug people that even though they've spent most of the day trying to murder him, he's still not convinced he should take their advice on becoming a drug addict. This epiphany causes them to all go into convulsions and Chad is transported back to the real world with Lou Gossett Jr.. Mr. Gossett decides that after a few near-death experiences and eight minutes of remedial headband education, Chad is ready to go out and educate others about drug abuse. Chad happily accepts, seeing no problem in taking advice from the strange man who just locked him in a snake-infested labyrinth with four murderous junkies. He rushes off to the cool gang to share his new knowledge of drugs with kids that hate him. And if you've been paying attention, that knowledge pretty much begins and ends with "Marijuana and alcohol... are drugs."
Drugs and alcohol: intergalactic starfighters or something.
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He finds the four cool kids in the same parking garage, who after finishing off a half a pound of weed and a fifth of scotch, are only barely too torn up to ride their skateboards well. That's it. I'll tell you right now, if I washed a bag of pot down with a bottle of scotch, I couldn't even identify a skateboard if you put it next to a pile of fish. So you can say what you want about how lame and carefully multi-cultural they are; these damn geeks know how to party. Chad gives them a stern I-told-you-so speech and explains the dangers of drugs in a way everyone can understand: spaceships. You see, we're all like spaceships, and drugs and alcohol are you know, like, enemy spaceships. Chad goes ten minutes too far into the metaphor, describing how our spaceship's fuel pump is like our circulatory system, and our ship's air ducts are like the body's respiratory system. I can't tell you how it ends because long before it ended I found myself screaming and couldn't stop.
Above: The cool gang, dancing in the middle of a video store next to a blaring jam box and a stack of beer cans and pot. No one could begin to guess what kind of world the writers of Straight Up grew up in, but we need them put in charge of video store policies as soon as possible.
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The gang eventually gets as tired of Chad's brain-melting spaceship speech as the viewers are, and they stagger drunkenly out of the parking garage. Kevin mistakes himself for Lex Luthor somewhere around here and dramatically turns around to tell Chad Allen, "You think you know it all. I'll get you next time!" It sounds totally sinister and foreboding until you remember that his nefarious master plan is to make Chad Allen have a sip of beer.
The video tortures us for another hour with the cool kids' rainbow gang of united colors giving Chad a second, third, and fourth chance to be cool and have a beer. Chad gives in to their whining a couple times, and both times he is transported back to Lou Gossett's magic shaft. And both times that happens, he's super happy to see Lou Gossett, totally forgetting that after each happy elevator song, he's going to be thrown into a world of dislogic where a group of costumed mental patients try to kill him. By the way, it may be important to you to know that when Chad Allen dances along to the elevator song, I have a theory that he is replaced by a miniature epileptic stunt-dancer wearing a jockstrap that somehow feeds on human crotch.
Chad Allen and his increasing arsenal of fashion accessories.
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Chad's arsenal against the maniacs is upgraded with each trip to the dark drug world. After the headband, he receives a pair of huge magic sunglasses that can see through the illusion of alcohol advertisements. Then he gets a magic medallion that enhances his drug-refusing willpower. The medallion is extra important for Chad because his willpower is a mess. This is a kid who will lock himself in an enclosed space with any clearly insane person that asks, and would willingly sandblast his genitals if a fat kid told him it was cool to try. All of these amazing artifacts might help him achieve drug free enlightenment, but with each trip to the elevator, he looks a little bit more like a lunatic street pimp.
Absoludicrous Rating: 5/5
Above and Below: Holy fucking shit, for the love of fuck; fuck. That is gay.
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The adventures in the world beyond Lou Gossett Jr.'s elevator never get less dangerous, and Chad Allen never gets less stupid. Booze, Pot, and Cocaine mug him four more times, shoot at him with lasers, glue him to the floor and roll a barbell at his ankles, and trick him into walking between two crushing walls. His sense of self-preservation reaches an all time low when Booze runs up to him disguised as a clown and lures him into a gay bar. And when I say gay bar, I mean bread-making, Julie Andrews pleasure cruise gay.
This bar makes Lou Gossett's rainbow nightshirt and elevator prancing look like a lumberjack competition. This is a bar with raised pedestals where sweaty men do slow, sexy exercises. And when you whip your head in the opposite direction from that, you'll see a cowboy in a pink scarf, wearing chaps and everything, walk in and hop onto a pommel horse to make sassy faces and do hammer curls. Seriously, teachers, I don't care if your students are humping each other in the ass while they're learning from this video, Straight Up is too gay for children.
Availability:
As shown by Straight Up's graph (above), "Drugs + Your Body = Happy!" Also, (below) rock and roll!
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The main lesson of the movie was that there was nothing more dangerous or homoerotic than saying no to drugs, so it's likely that most copies of Straight Up were destroyed. You might get lucky and find it at Good Will or a video store too lazy to throw their community service tapes away, and when I say "lucky," I of course mean "taking your soul to the limits of terrifying darkness."
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? AN ALL-STAR SPECIAL STRAIGHT UP FEATURE!
Cocaine - Cassandra Gava played the witch in Conan the Barbarian and starred in Dead by Dawn, regarded by many breast enthusiasts as the finest of the Shannon Tweed erotic thrillers.
Miss Pot - Merrya Small went on to appear in such fine films as Puppet Master, and in some kind of cosmic practical joke, starred in a second TV show called "Straight Up" in Canada five years ago.
Kevin - Aron Eisenberg followed Miss Pot's example by also appearing in a Puppet Master movie, and continued to take Hollywood by storm in 1994's Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills.
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Fat Kid - Scott Nemes went on to play a fat kid in the Wonder Years, and was Meatballs 2's fat kid, "Butterball." Straight Up had a very clear impact on his life, as he opened a non-alcoholic club in 1993 called "Spiral West." His future plans are to bridge the relations gap between his stomach and butter.
Chad Allen was outed by The Globe in 1996 when they published pictures of him making out with a dude in a hot tub.
No one's saying that this video turned him gay, but I think there's a good chance that whoever's mouth Chad's tongue is in in this picture owes a thank you note to that cowboy on the pommel horse. Career-wise, Chad is currently best known for appearing in the episode "How Long Has This Been Going On?" on The Love Boat: The Next Wave.
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