Fire with Fire

I was 15. We had satellite with all the movie channels. I had a different opinion of what the word "romance" meant.

This movie was on, and I was sucked in. I was left swooning and breathless.

The passion! The hormones! The total lack of foresight!

I mean, for crying out loud, look at that cover!  Anyway, it showed up on Netflix instant view recently and 15-year-old me said "OMG!! Watch it! It's so steamy and hot and romantic!!!"

Not so...

As I watched it a decade later, I felt nothing other than general disbelief.  Here's the basic plot:

Cute blonde girl likes to pretend she's Ophelia and photograph herself (yeah, that's healthy)
Boy in a prison work camp for.... something (plot development is that good)
They see each other and instantly fall in love.

Because that's how it works.

So girl (who is talented and has a future) is at a private, all girls catholic school and thinks it would be good "charity" to invite the prison camp boys over for a dance.  For some unknown reason, the nuns agree.  The girls break out the Aqua Net and shoulder pads and this happens:






Holy S@!t! It's love! When he leaves, she starts crying, what is going on?! Fast forward to 1:50 to see the couple.
And also-what is in Virginia Madsen's hair??

So after this, girl and boy secretly meet up and have sex in a crypt.

Right next to the coffin.

And it's soooo romantic.

Then, the prison guard catches them. So what do they do? (after getting dressed and blowing out the 500 candles they brought)

Go on the run. Throw their lives away and spend the rest of the movie hiding out in some old cabin in the woods. Where Mrs. burns the bacon (where did they get bacon?? where will food come from? Clothes? I'm too practical for this.) In the end they are discovered and then fake their own deaths to avoid capture.

After knowing each other for 45 minutes.

Am I getting cynical in my old age? I left the movie annoyed and yelling at the characters, not hot and bothered like before.

However, this still gets me: