If you’re reading this, you probably don’t have firsthand experience dealing with the misery that comes from being a smoking-hot, 18-year-old girl (but if you do, please feel free to email us — with an attached photo). Luckily for us, though, we have Just One of the Guys to share with us the insight our own lives thus far have failed to provide.
Terri (Sandra Bullock lookalike Joyce Hyser) is a high school reporter who believes she isn’t taken seriously because of her impressive rack. In order to test her theory, she decides to transfer to a nearby school and pose as a male student (where she is accurately described by female admirer Sherilyn Fenn as looking, “like the Karate Kid”).
Speaking of a certain Ralph Macchio movie, professional ’80s asshole William Zabka shows up to play the school bully who picks on “Terrance” and her new friend, Rick (April Fool’s Day’s Clayton Rohner), whom she inevitably falls in love with and has to flash in order to prove she’s a lady-girl and not a really cute gay dude.
While lacking the verisimilitude that made the concurrent John Hughes films so special, Just One of the Guys has a fun, timeless quality that keeps it from being another dated ’80s teen comedy (and as a bonus, it has a much happier ending than Boys Don’t Cry). Hyser is a genuinely charming lead, and it’s a shame her work here didn’t allow her to go on to bigger and better things. —Allan Mott