Despite its teen protagonist, steamy sex scenes, and the hilarious presence of Curtis “Booger” Armstrong, Risky Business doesn’t seem like a teen sex comedy at all. (That’s a compliment.)
Why does Risky Business feel like it belongs to a different genre? For one thing, it looks like an actual movie, not a direct-to-video sex romp filmed over five days in some abandoned high school. The stars help too, although neither Tom Cruise nor Rebecca De Mornay had yet become famous. This movie, of course, changed that.
It’s also cynical as hell, simultaneously rejecting achievement (so long, Princeton, hello, University of Illinois!) and embracing greed (Joel, a member of the Junior Entrepreneurs Club, finds his calling in the sex trade). Roger Ebert compared Risky Business to The Graduate, calling it “one of the smartest, funniest, most perceptive satires in a long time.”