A notorious disaster. Seventeen-year-old David (Martin Hewitt) and 15-year-old Jade (hapless Brooke Shields) fall obsessively in love and do the nasty with wild abandon. Jade's father (Don Murray) tolerates it for a time, but when David very nearly moves into Jade's bedroom, he banishes
the boy from the house for a month. Love-crazed David decides to redeem himself by setting the house on fire and then rescuing the family. The arson, however, gets out of control, and the house burns to the ground. Scott Spencer's intelligent, rather lurid novel of youthful angst is here watered
down to stock teen romance. Most notably, the graphic sex scenes at the core of the book are reduced to picture-perfect set pieces, and the film is soporifically slow-moving. Director Zeffirelli, in an transparent attempt to duplicate the smash success of his ROMEO AND JULIET, fails to supply the
moments of camp, color, and hysterical conviction that made the earlier film work. This movie's only significance lies in the fact that it offered the film debuts of future stars Tom Cruise, James Spader, and Jami Gertz. The maudlin title song was nominated for an Oscar.
