My Tutor Movie Review

Believe it or don't, My Tutor is among the top 50 indie moneymakers of all time. Why? My own theory is that the cast and the script helped to give it good word-of-mouth. Hunky Matt Lattanzi needs a tutor so Dad Kevin McCarthy hires pretty Caren Kaye for the job. So far, it's standard. In fact, the plot line continues to be standard (GUY MEETS TUTOR, TUTOR LIKES GUY, GUY LOSES TUTOR), but the many different acting styles give My Tutor a skewed edge. For example, Crispin Glover, whom I'd never seen before, makes an early appearance as Matt's buddy. Even in 1982, Glover could take a conventional part and twist every line of dialogue inside out. At first, I thought he was doing an imitation of Stu Erwin, but it soon became obvious that Glover's wild internal energy was all his own. When he turned up later in River's Edge, Twister, and Wild at Heart, audiences knew what to expect from the moment they laid eyes on him: ANYTHING and EVERYTHING! Matt Lattanzi was such a cute puppy that no one really cared whether he could act or not, Caren Kaye (later seen in 1990's Satan's Princess and 1994's Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings) COULD act, thus giving her character an aura of intelligence and common sense, and one-time Oscar nominee Kevin McCarthy just played Dad like a villain and it worked. A painless, and sometimes funny, way to spend 97 minutes at an airport hotel between planes.

1982 (R) 97m/C Caren Kaye, Matt Lattanzi, Kevin McCarthy, Clark Brandon, Bruce Bauer, Arlene Golonka, Crispin Glover, Shelley Taylor Morgan, Amber Denyse Austin, Francesca “Kitten” Natividad, Jewel Shepard, Marilyn Tokuda; D: George Bowers; W: Joe Roberts; C: Mac Ahlberg; M: Webster Lewis. VHS, LV