To me, this movie is perfection.

hyped garbage

How sad is this?

Good movie but grossly overrated

Over The Edge is a classic film about teen angst that is very powerful, well done and authentic. While my junior high years were a decade later, these are the type of kids that I could hang with and relate to. This is pretty on point and truthful perspectives to the crowd that uptight adults refer to as "juvenile delinquents". The kids in this film aren't given much to do in the placid, condominium community of New Grenada. So when they are pushed to the boiling point, they push back hard and truly raise hell in this great film. This is taken from the point of view of the disenfranchised youth and the adult and authoritative figures are treated accordingly. This is all to the kick ass 70's sound track that includes Cheap Trick, Van Halen, The Cars and The Ramones. This is also the film debut of actor Matt Dillon, who gives a powerful performance as rebel youth Richie. Over The Edge is my kind of movie and reminds me of a lot of my own experiences as a bored and frustrated teenager living in the suburbs.

In 1979, Jonathan Kaplan released an edgy film about juvenile delinquents starring an unknown group of teenagers with no acting experience. Thirty seven years later the film is a cult classic. 'Over The Edge' focuses on a circle of junior high friends who hang out at a recreation center. Carl (Michael Kramer) is an impressionable young man who hangs out with trouble maker Richie White (Matt Dillon). When a tragedy strikes the quiet community, a cop (Harry Northup) is determined to keep any other problems from occurring. Carl becomes an angry young man desperate to escape his parents and life in New Grenada.This movie was pulled from theaters due to controversies surrounding violence in theaters after the release of 'The Warriors'. Like that film, 'Over The Edge' is edgy, but it's not a violent film in reality. 'Over The Edge' was based on a news article about real life events in which teenagers decided to take over their town. The film is an interesting one due to the fact that most of the stars, including Dillon, were not professional actors at the time. The movie is packed full of great rock songs of the era by artists such as Cheap Trick and The Cars.I highly recommend this film to anyone who grew up in the seventies or enjoy seeing Matt Dillon. This film is also popular with younger audiences who did not get to grow up in the seventies.

Matt Dillon made his acting debut in Over the Edge playing a punk kid, a character he would parlay into a few more coming-of-age movies in subsequent years. He managed to have a pretty fair career despite the typecasting. Here, his nascent bad-boy personality and charm kick the movie up a notch or two, making a household name for himself in the process.New Grenada is a fictional town in the middle of the desert, a planned community. There's nothing for kids to do, save for hanging out at the local recreation center - which inconveniently closes at 6 pm. It's only a matter of time before the garden-variety vandalism worsens, and sure enough, when two kids fire a BB gun at a police-officer's car from an overpass, tensions in the town become proportionally thicker.At the center of the movie is young Carl (Michael Eric Kramer), son of the homeowners' association president, who's trying to get Texas millionaires to buy some prime real estate in town (rather than build a bowling alley). Carl is described as a nice, smart kid who happens to run with a rebellious crowd, particularly the perpetually on-probation Richie (Dillon), who wears his damn-the-man attitude like a pair of tighty whities.The scourge of the kids' existence is authority in the name of one Officer Doberman (Harry Northup), who is not above harassing the kids any chance he gets. And, for much of the movie, he gets plenty of chances. And when the rec center is inevitably shut down (the better to prevent the rich investors from noticing the Kid Problem), all hell really breaks loose in a realistic, tragic denouement.The script (by Charles Haas and Tim Hunter) effectively illustrates the angst of late-seventies teens desperate to do something, anything, to entertain themselves, something that'll gain themselves notice if not notoriety. The movie is loosely based on an incident that occurred in a real-life planned community in California in the early 1970s and certainly still rings true today.

After reading reviews, both here on Amazon and elsewhere, I was expecting much from this film. And, whilst it undoubtedly stirred impassioned emotions for many, it left me rather more questioning than sympathetic.Maybe I'm just too middle-aged now, to really take the side of rebellious youths who then go on to, well, riot. With the riots over here last Summer appalling all but the perpetrators I'm afraid I wasn't hugely moved by their angst. Sure, I can understand the boredom and frustration of youth but I, myself was brought up on a farm and so there was always work and things to do when I was their age and so didn't suffer with that particular affliction.I didn't mind their dalliance with drugs, at least as far as the film was concerned; that seemed very natural and added interest and I think it was these elements that bumped the certificate up to 18. The soundtrack may have appealed to those who liked those bands, they were before my time, at least in '79, when the film was released, so I can't even say that the music was great.The young cast is undoubtedly the movie's strong point and much praise has been made on Matt Dillon's debut role. Again, maybe because of my now tender age, I found the politics and economics of it all that were causing all the social problems rather more interesting than that of the youths, which could be a bit worrying!Despite what I've said about not fully appreciating Over the Edge, it is a good film and well made and I hope that when I come to see it again, sometime, I'll get into it more.