Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Read some of the reviews in here,and I keep wonderin if we're all talking bout the same movie. Cause this is absolutely garbage. Poorly edited,poorly directed,poorly performed,decent soundtrack,but it can't save the movie.The story is all over the place,but the gist of it is: Two girls running away.One from the law, the other from her preacher politician dad.Who seem to be intended on proving that there's something wrong with his daughter. They runaway together and hole up in different abandoned buildings.Without any real plan There was supposedly some lesbian love in the picture,but it got dropped.. The one running from the law is clearly really mental ill.Though they don't really dare touch into the subject,too deeply. The biggest problem is that the scenes are so poorly put together,and acted.You don't really understand what's going on,or what drives the character.All of a Sudden they have a band and fans. A radio dj. who've been tracking them.And that has received leathers,from the politician's daughter, they all of a sudden turn on,even though he done nothing but helping them.There are a lot of scenes that don't make sense.Like the two of them going around dropping TV-sets from rooftops,you never get why,or what point they are trying to makeI got the impression the director was trying for something that never quite got made.I can see some parallels to a later 80s movie that was called certain fury(Every other 80s movie, had the name fury in it) Which has much of the same storyline,but in a more raw realistic way.I can also see some similarities to the fab,stains,with diane lane And I can definitely see Pump up the volume in it.Maybe that was the movie he was trying to make.All in all this was a terrible movie

I feel like the little kid in the Hans Christian Anderson story who is the only one that can see the emperor isn't wearing any cloths. This movie is terrible! I suspect the people who claim to love it so much think it somehow makes them cool to say so. It does'nt. I wonder also about all those who wrote about how they cleaned up the real Times Square. They think it was better in 1980 than it is now? Really? How much time did you spend there in 1980?? If you crave danger so much go to East New York or Bed Sty or Washington Hts. etc. etc. You are as full of crap as this dreadful movie. It's badly acted, badly directed, badly edited and it is unrealistic and makes no sense. If it were one hundred times better it would still suck.

I was one of the (very few) persons who actually caught this up a theatre back in 1980. The plot has a rich girl (Trini Alvarado) running away from a hospital with lesbian punk Nicky (Robin Johnson). They hang out in a curiously unmenacing Times Square (back in 1980 Times Square was VERY dangerous and unsafe). They become fast friends and become famous outlaws (or something). Top billed Tim Curry pops up as a DJ now and then.I was 18 when this came out so I was part of the target audience. I saw it with a friend of mine the same age. It was TERRIBLE! The plot was stupid and irresponsible (it makes running away from home look like a great thing), had a soundtrack that was the equivalent of someone hitting you on the head with a hammer, lousy acting (especially by Johnson) and was basically dull when not dumb. It was pretty obvious that this was a studio's attempt to sanitize punk rock and they threw in a lesbian angle to get the guys to come in (most of that material wasn't shot or was cut out completely). It bombed badly at the box office and was quickly forgotten. I heard this has a cult following among lesbians and it has been shown at gay and lesbian film festivals but really--it's pretty terrible. There are much better punk rock and lesbian films out there. A 1 all the way.

Time can be a cruel mistress, but it can also be a kind one when it comes to films that don't hit the vibe of moviegoers as a whole. "Times Square", a gritty, quirky, unconventional coming-of-age tale, which I saw twice on the NYC affiliate of one of the Big Three networks (guess which one and someone lost a bet), is one of those movies.We introduced to Nicky Marotta (then newcomer and NYC native Robin Johnson), a 16-year-old homeless orphan whose guttural voice and foul vocabulary makes her a neo-Damon Runyon character and she has a volatile attitude to boot. That attitude and an act of vandalism land her in a hospital's psych ward. Her roommate is Pamela Pearl (flower-child like and fellow native Trini Alvarado of "Rich Kids", "Little Children" and "The Good Girl"), a smart but timid and sad soul whose politically ambitious father (the late stage actor Peter Coffield) plans to revitalize the then-seedy Times Square section of NYC. She's there because of her public meltdown when her father carelessly exploits her at a public hearing. Finding a kindred soul, Nicky sways Pamela to run away, and the two, after jacking an ambulance, make a home out of an abandoned pier at the Lower East Side and decide their own destinies. Aw, youth… While making money at a Times Square nightclub (Pamela's a dancer who doesn't go topless [!]; Nicky's a kick-ass rocker), they befriend late night radio DJ Johnny Laguardia (Cheshire Cat-grinning Tim Curry of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"), a fan/reader of Pamela's poems she sends to him. LaGuardia takes an interest in Pamela's alleged kidnapping and turns the girls into fringe celebs, a rock duo known as The Sleez Sisters that also run street scams and throw TV sets from roofs. The girls revel in their anarchy and freedom, but Pamela's father, Nicky's social worker (Anna Maria Horsford of "Amen" and "The Wayans Bros") and Nicky's instability drive the two apart, putting them in deeper malaise.Like Sam Peckinpah's cavalry adventure, "Major Dundee", "Times Square" is an interesting failure, due to the row between its' producer, record mogul Roger Stigwood ("Saturday Night Fever"), who wanted the film to cash in on the emerging punk/new wave music at the time and its' director/co-writer Allan Moyle ("Pump Up The Volume", "Empire Records") who, with script assist from Leanne Unger and Jacob Brackman, wanted to tell (pre-Reaganism) a coming-of-age lesbian romance, inspired by the portions of a journal, penned by a young, mentally ill woman, Moyle discovered in a second-hand sofa while living in Times Square. Stigwood won the fight, canning Moyle (who wrote many unproduced scripts for a decade!) and had his people edit the film, but "Times Square" was panned, critically and financially, due to its' awkward narrative (karma for Roger perhaps?). There have been rumors of edited romance scenes that were filmed, but it's doubtful, due to the ages of the leads at the time of production and SAG child labor laws.However, due to being on TV, home video (the DVD's sadly out of print) and lesbian film festivals, "Times Square" stands as a cult classic, courtesy of its idiosyncrasy and cast. Though it's a sad shame she didn't have a stronger career, Ms. Johnson's a force of nature, embodying the spirit of the film's once-decadent locale; sleazy, rude, dangerous and subversively romantic. Ms. Alvarado, who survives now as a character actor, seems to be a tagalong, but holds her own as a shy flower, finally outside out of the geranium and loving it (her first gig as a dancer is awkward but fun); the two girls compliment each other with their opposite personalities, protecting each other and themselves in a "Red Light" district. It's oddly unrealistic (they would have pimped out at the time), but it oddly works.Curry's quite the reliable prankster who doesn't know when to say "when" while Coffield and Horsford are reliable killjoys. Look out for a young Elizabeth Pena ("La Bamba", "Resurrection Blvd"). The soundtrack, filled with tracks by XTC, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Lou Reed and others is a treat for punk/new wave fans, yet a happy disco beat co-sung by Robin Gibb ("The Bee Gees") is a sore thumb.For a hugely "forgotten" thirtysomething film, the impact it has made is fascinating, predating MTV (their music video heydays) and D.I.Y. culture; influencing the filmmaking likes of Peter Jackson (directed the similar "Heavenly Creatures") and the looks of comic book characters (Ms. Johnson's raccoon mask and garbage bag-tunic prophecies Hit Girl from the "Kick-Ass" comic book and film) and outlasting the infamous area, now a soulless tourist trap. Like Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver", there are a lot of girls like Pamela and Nicky, regardless if their environment is changed."Times Square" isn't perfect, but its fringe charm and yearning to be itself makes it worthy to watch. Good luck looking for it.