“Don’t you sometimes wish you could just meet someone who’d carry you off and take care of you?” Susan Berlanger (Kristy McNichol) asks her friend Lisa (Kaki Hunter) in the opening moments of Just the Way You Are (1984). It’s a funny sentiment coming from a character so ambivalent about all the amorous attention she attracts wherever she goes.
Susan, a flautist about to embark on her first recital tour in Europe, is catnip to men. Her quick wit, adversarial posturing, dazzling smile and structurally complex hair even win admirers over the phone. Jack (Lance Guest of Please Mom, Don’t Hit Me), an answering service operator, is so smitten that he knocks on her door in a gorilla suit. He scampers away just as quickly after noticing her leg brace.
Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.