Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
Film fumbles story of young love
Cleveland Press November 1, 1973
Young love is awkward and "Jeremy" is about young love. But "Jeremy" is also an awkward movie rather than one that simply dramatizes awkwardness.
The story is about a couple of teenagers who start going together, fall in love and then are suddenly separated.
Most of the movie concerns itself with all of the little things -- the accidental meetings that aren't really accidental, the phone calls with those dreaded silent moments, or simply walking hand in hand.
Simplicity can be carried too far and one longs after a while for some notion that something is happening worthy of photographing rather than having the feeling that the camera was simply turned on to see whatever it could see.
Jeremy is played beguilingly by Robby Benson. The boy is a mass of contradictions, a creature of widely varying interests and mental acrobatics that only the young are supple enough to handle.
Glynnis O'Connor is the new student who catches his interest, a girl more than pretty, one who seems mature beyond her years.
The anguished plans he has to meet her and the hesitation are all realistic enough but one longs after a time for moments of heightened reality. Instead of the movie merely becomes dull.
Apparently aware of this the plot is suddenly fraught with complications. The two consummate their love and no sooner have they bedded down than her father tells her they are moving back to Detroit from New York because he has his old job back
The youngsters are devastated. They hold hands and look weepy and they part and that's all there is.
And somehow you care but not as much as you should. You don't care because the movie never really explored anyone or anything. The boy and girl almost existed in a vacuum. The movie, when it had nothing to say about people, filled the screen with grainy photography and your ears with overblown music and dialog that slipped into things like "Oh, wow" and "Not really."
"Jeremy", is simply a "Love Story" without death, a formula movie that tries to get its formula past you with techniques that pass for artiness or realism or both but are seldom either.
