User Reviews

Gotcha! When you're a child of the 80's like I was you tend to see movies in your adolescents that you don't understand until you become older. I would say this is true for any decade you live in, and the media in which we experience these stories is not exclusive to just film. I watched "Gotcha" when I was seven. I didn't get all the jokes, but I liked the action. The title and the imagines of the film stayed with me until this very day.

Yesterday, I watch "Gotcha!" again on Television. I knew it starred Anthony Edwards from 'Revenge of The Nerd" fame and later the hospital drama "ER". It also starred a very cute looking Linda Fiorentino(of course she always looks cute), sporting a short hair cut. The film is basically a James Bond as if written by a UCLA student. It's about a college pupil who gets caught up in Cold War espionage. You would think that by that description is would be like the terrible film like "If Looks Could Kill", starring the Richard Grieco-which by the way he served fries last week, and that was the best performance he has done in a long time. The truth is "Gotcha!" is not that dreadful. actually its kind of funny.

It turns out the college kid played by Anthony Edwards, who's name is Jonathan Moore in the film, likes to play a campus spy game with other students called "Gotcha!". The game is pretty simple; you have a paint gun, you follow your target around the University and you shot them. Jonathan is called by his best friend Manolo "a regular James Bond", then Jonathan say back "Yeah but James Bond had Octopussy, I can't even get a date." Later on in the film is romantic problems go from bad, to good, to great, then just down right terrible.

Manolo and Jonathan go to France during their break from school. The scene in which Jonathan asked his parents for money to go to Europe is amusing and but it could have been written better. In the city of love, Jonathan meets the Linda Fiorentino character called Sasha; she is not who she appears to be. I liked the love story between Jonathan & Sasha; there could have been a whole movie their by itself, a movie I would actually like to watch. She teaches him the art of lovemaking and Europe, while he teaches her about America. A few days after they meet and fall in love, she tells him she has to go to Berlin where she has to pick up a package. She asked Jonathan to go with her. It is about this time that he gets suspicious, but does not believe yet that she is involved in espionage or that they are in danger. He goes with her. After a day or two in Berlin, she asked him to go to East Berlin, and a series in a series of spy like chases and amusing jokes follow after that.

Even though there is many minor jokes in the film, there is one major joke that I thought was down right hilarious. It brought it from a two and a half star movie up to a three. After having a really bad time in East Berlin, Jonathan was told to leave that side of the country if she give him a certain message; she does. He leaves the checkpoint, walks over to a military officer on the West Berlin side and asked if he is in the American zone. The man says yes. Jonathan turns towards East Berlin, give the finger, and says "F*** You!" When he walks way, the military officer say "I've been wanting to do that for six months." This is a good movie to watch on Television, but I would not pay good, hard earned money to rent it. For what it was I thought it was fun.

In what appears to be the Pokémon of the 1980's, the "Gotcha!" game at the beginning is an annoying campus game of paint ball shooters who run around shooting each other, shouting out gotta when they succeed. Anthony Edwards is an expert in the game and when he goes to Europe with his roommate, he finds himself in trouble when he becomes involved with the older and alluring Linda Fiorentino, a Czech woman who is apparently a courier for espionage agents, heading with her from Paris to both West and East Berlin. Some mysterious film ends up in his possession, and that puts Russian agents on his trail and his life in jeopardy. The seemingly naive Edwards must play all the games he's learned through his paint ball gotcha game, and that results in the game being utilized when he returns to L. A. and discovers that the adventure with the agents is not over. But UCLA is Edward's territory, so he knows how to lead CIA agents into traps as well as the Boris Badinoff like KGB agents.

While the film is ridiculous in many ways, it is extremely entertaining in spite of the convoluted storyline and the absurdities a various events that happened throughout the film. He also has to deal with somewhat overprotective wealthy parents, veteran character actor Alex Rocco and Emmy-Winning soap actress Marla Adams, reminding me of a combination of Constance Towers and Dina Merrill with her sophisticated looks. Something about her pink big button earrings in her first scene had me laughing though, a far cry from the sophisticated way her "Young and the Restless" would be seen in public, either in 1985 (which she was on at the time) or her more recent stint that won her the award. Rocco is funny too, an interesting casting choice considering that he usually played blue collar workers, even when involved with Marj Dusay on "The Facts of Life" while playing Jo's father and Marj played Blair's sophisticated mother.

The beautiful Fiorentino is obviously emulating Natasha Fatale even though her character is a lot smarter. It's easy to see why Edwards would fall into her trap and she's not exactly a villain even if she is a bit of a minx. If you put aside expectations of any type of reality, you will find a lot of fun in this film and as much as I was rolling my eyes at it, I was laughing at it and with it and realizing that I was enjoying myself in spite of how implausible everything was. There are many funny moments even in the most intense situations, and Edwards, trying to get across to West Berlin from East Berlin, has a great reaction when he succeeds which is followed by an even funnier reaction from the West Berlin guard who is obviously American. Perhaps that 80's style of over the top irreverence makes this work, and as an action comedy, that makes this worth revisiting especially if you saw this when it first came out and want a good piece of 80's nostalgia.

"Gotcha!" begins with a fairly obvious inspiration, takes it to some interesting places, and then misplaces it toward the end of the film. It also selects the wrong character to be the center of the story. Other than that, it's a fairly good movie - good enough to make us wish it had tried a little harder.

The movie begins with a student game called Gotcha, which involves undergraduates who stalk each other across a college campus and "kill" each other with globs of paint. A player of the game (Anthony Edwards) talks his parents into letting him go to Paris on vacation, and he's hardly off the plane before he meets a beautiful, young Czech woman named Sasha, who is played by Linda Fiorentino. They have a sudden, passionate romance, and when she asks him to go along with her on a trip to East Germany, he accepts. Well, of course it turns out that she's a spy, and the two of them run into trouble from the East German police and Russian spymasters. Real life turns into a deadly game of Gotcha (which is the movie's fairly obvious inspiration), and the chase turns into a well-directed cat-and-mouse game. By now we enjoy the chemistry between the callow undergraduate and the slick European spy, and the movie has gotten to be fairly exciting. Then it loses track of itself. The student returns to America, gets involved in further intrigues, and becomes convinced the Czech woman was only using him. For reasons only the screenplay writer knows for sure, there are no less than two excruciating scenes in which the student tries to explain the entire story, which is a waste of time, since we already know the entire story and would rather get on with it. The basic mistake in the movie, however, isn't in the pacing, but in the storytelling. They've made the movie about its less interesting major character. The woman is infinitely more intriguing; she's bright, exotic, resourceful and mysterious, and yet we get the story told from the point of view of the campus nerd. Instead of Plot A (simple-minded undergraduate meets beautiful spy, then blunders through strange situation), why not Plot B (fascinating woman is forced to use dense undergraduate as an accomplice to pull off spy caper)? That's an especially appealing idea with Fiorentino available as the spy. She's one of those movie talents who seem to materialize out of thin air, a genuine original. This is her second movie; her first was "Vision Quest," where she played the drifter who wandered into Matthew Modine's life and encouraged his quest for a state wrestling championship (I don't write the plots, I only report them). Fiorentino has quick, dark eyes and a deep voice and an aura of being smart and sensible; how many actresses in their early 20s can play a spy and be convincing and never seem ridiculous? Anthony Edwards, who plays the undergraduate, is fine for his role - likable and slightly goofy, and able to pull himself together in an emergency. But the very nature of this screenplay means that when he's onscreen, the most interesting things will be happening offscreen, including Fiorentino's adventures in the clutches of the police. I'll bet the men who made this movie just assumed it had to be told from his point of view, and never considered hers. Too bad. I think they missed their best chance.

Clumsy and virginal college student Jonathan (a fine and engaging performance by Anthony Edwards) plays an assassination game called Gotcha with fellow students. The guns and bullets become the authentic McCoy after Jonathan meets and falls for real-life spy Sasha (a spot-on sultry and entrancing portrayal by Linda Fiorentino).

Director Jeff Kanew offers an on the money clever and enjoyable blend of humor, action, romance, and suspense that benefits tremendously from a constant snappy pace, nice use of various exotic foreign locations, plenty of wickedly funny dialogue, and a highly likeable breezy tone. Edwards and Fiorentino make for appealing leads; they receive sound support from Jsu Garcia as smooth dude Manolo, Alex Rocco and Marla Adams as Jonathan's baffled parents, Klaus Lowitsch as menacing Russian agent Vlad, and Irene Olga Lopez as scatterbrained maid Rosario. Both King Baggot's slick cinematography and Bill Conti's bouncy score are up to par. A total blast.

Anthony Edwards must have either had a really great agent or been really good on auditions to have simply survived, let alone thrived as an actor after this plodding, superficial and stereotypical 80s movie.

Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) is a college student who is absolutely great at a game called Gotcha! He and a bunch of other players hunt each other around campus and shoot each other with paintball guns. After the audience gets a display of Jonathan's skill, he and his friend and roommate Manolo (Jsu Garcia) are off to Europe for Spring Break. While in France, with their collars turns up as required by the federal Bad Cinema Fashion Act of 1980, Jonathan meets a mysterious woman named Sasha (Linda Fiorentino) and ditches his friend to go with her to Berlin. It turns out Sasha is a courier trying to sneak some film out of East Berlin. She ends up hiding the film in Jonathan's back pack and he ends up running for his life from the KGB.

Now, you'd think that this point in the story is where Jonathan's skills as a paintball warrior would come into play and he'd use the talents at hunting and hiding he displayed in the first 5 minutes of the movie to win a cat-and-mouse game with the KGB agents. You'd think that…but you'd be wrong. Instead we get this incredibly ponderous and shallow series of scenes where Jonathan behaves more like a kid bumming his way across Europe on 5 dollars a day than someone caught up in international espionage.

Eventually Jonathan makes it back home, where he puts on a pair of sunglasses for no reason as also mandated by the federal Bad Cinema Fashion Act of 1980 and the film stops even trying to make sense. The KGB follows him back to America but Jonathan doesn't trust the CIA so he enlists the help of an LA street gang and…ugh. It's just all so stupid.

Anthony Edwards turns in a nondescript performance as one of those 80s movie rebels who are really about as unconventional and provocative as Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties. Linda Fiorentino rolls out an Czechoslovakian accent that makes her sound like Natasha from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The film's soundtrack lets you hear about 10 seconds of "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and then buries you under a landslide of the worst 80s synthesizer rock you'll ever hear. Most of the characters in this film seem to have come straight out of the best selling book "How to Write a Bad Sitcom".

Basically, Gotcha! was produced when someone entered the words "paintball" and "spy" into the same bad movie generator that belched out dozens of other generically unfunny and unentertaining films during the Reagan era. If you want to see Edwards with a luxurious mane of hair or get a glimpse of Fiorentino's boobs, you can find it her. Otherwise, just go rent Teen Wolf again or something.