You know, even I have gaps in my knowledge of 1980s pop culture, i.e., movies or other media phenomena from that most awesome of decades that somehow slipped past me back in the day. And two of the biggest omissions are a pair of cult-classic films written and directed by a cat who calls himself Savage Steve Holland and starring John Cusack: Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.

Actually, it’s not quite accurate to say they slipped past me. I’m pretty sure I actually did see both of them at some point. In fact, I’m almost positive I ran One Crazy Summer when I was working as a projectionist at the old Cameo Theater, the old-fashioned, single-screen movie house where I had my very first job. But it would seem that neither of them made much impression on me. All I recall of Better Off Dead is that it’s the source of the ubiquitous Gen-X catchphrase “I want my two dollars,” and all I remembered from One Crazy Summer was Bobcat Goldthwait in a Godzilla suit wreaking havoc at some kind of country-club party.

I was pretty content with this state of affairs, too. I’ve never felt like I was missing something for not remembering the Savage Steve canon, although I was occasionally bemused by the reactions of fellow Children of the ’80s when I told them I had no memory of Better Off Dead (apparently the more popular of the two). A couple weeks ago, however, I ran across a DVD copy of OCS at Big Lots, and I figured for only three bucks, why the hell not? Three dollars is nothing, I thought, and I like John Cusack well enough. So I bought it. And today I had the day off and I was sitting around the house, and I figured this is it, this is the perfect time to plug this particular hole in my memory. So I watched it.

To paraphrase Better Off Dead, I want my three dollars back.

OCS is often described as a romantic comedy — certainly the DVD cover art suggests that angle, far more than the original theatrical one-sheet seen above — but the truth is, it’s more like the tail end of the “slob comedy” cycle that flourished in the early-to-mid ’80s. That was the sub-genre in which a band of poor, uncouth but genial misfits finds a way to stick it to the rich bastards who’ve been giving them shit throughout the first two acts of the film. But One Crazy Summer is no Caddyshack. It isn’t even a Police Academy 3: Back in Training.

The plot is pretty thin, even by the admittedly low standards of the category, and it’s almost shockingly lazy. This is a movie in which the good guys don’t have enough money to save the love interest’s family home from the evil land developer (played by Mark Metcalf, naturally), so they decide to get even by winning the annual sailing regatta using a decrepit boat they fix up during the obligatory ’80s-flick fixing-something-up montage. But… how’d they buy a boat if they don’t have any money? And renovation supplies are fairly costly, too, where’d that dough come from? And wouldn’t the regatta organizers demand some kind of entry fee or something? Or at the very least inspect the boat beforehand and thus discover the “secret weapon?” Most slob comedies, at least the ones that have become classics, stick to their own premises and follow something resembling real-world logic. But not this one.

Of course, fans of the film would probably counter that the movie is illogical by design. Cusack’s character is an artist, you see, and he’s always drawing cartoons that comment on and inform the plot in various ways, which we of course see as animated interludes throughout the film. But in a move that I’m sure old Savage Steve thought was terribly clever, the live-action parts of the movie are like a cartoon, too, filled with ridiculous and sometimes downright bizarre gags that are obviously meant to echo the anything-goes world of the classic Looney Tunes shorts. Except the Looney Tunes were funny, and this movie isn’t. Not to me, anyhow. Monty Python notwithstanding, I don’t do absurdity.

Bottom line: One Crazy Summer is one stupid movie.