I know, I know. I hear what you’re saying out there. Some of us remember 1988. A movie from 1988 has no place in a segment about retro movies. It wasn’t that long ago, right? Sometimes, though, a film comes along that transfixes you. It compels you to watch it. This, my friends, is Vibes. All one must do is look over the cast list to wonder how wildly quirky this movie must be. Is this one I’d immediately wonder how I’d missed it? Or should Vibes return to the deepest, darkest corners of the streaming jungle? Read on. 

About Vibes 

Vibes follows two psychics (Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper). Shortly after getting to know each other, they meet a local eccentric (Peter Falk) who promises them $50,000 if they travel to Peru and track down his missing son. So he claims, anyway. As the film continues, they stumble onto questions of mystic treasure, gold, and a romantic adventure that feels inherently at home in the late 1980s. This is Romancing the Stone for the self-identifying “weird kids.” Julian Sands, Googy Gress and Michael Lerner co-star in the movie. Ken Kwapis directs Vibes from a script by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. 

To dive right in, the following must be said, “Holy casting decisions, Batman!” Truthfully, this is going to be what draws a majority of 2024 eyes to this project, and it works to a beautifully quirky effect. Goldblum, even at his still relatively young age, is already the lovable character we recognize today. He’s fully formed and delightful. Cyndi Lauper, meanwhile, is her colorful and eccentric self. If you remember the 1980s, you remember Cyndi Lauper.  

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As a film, Vibes is fully and unapologetically reliant on character and personality. Lauper and Goldblum jump into the lead roles with uninhibited zeal and lean into their immediately familiar personas. Truthfully, this rockets Vibes to a new cinematic plain. This film, as it currently exists, is only possible with Goldblum and Lauper in the lead roles. This is a different and less memorable movie with different actors playing these parts.

Vibes is at its wacky, zany best in Act 2 when Golblum, Lauper, and Peter Falk have the time and the freedom to bounce off each other. Always a brilliant character actor, Peter Falk is having a blast in this role. He’s unafraid to lean into this role and finds an easy verbal slapstick only he could pull off so effortlessly. 

As the film shifts into Act 3, it steps away from its easy sense of humor, and things get a little more traditional. While the leads try their darndest, it slips back into familiar and generic action/rom-com territory. This is particularly frustrating because Julian Sands is the performer who ends up largely wasted. While a film like this probably needs a “straight” man, in a movie with this much personality, his scenes sag significantly. 

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Ultimately, this is a film that, to some, will always feel at least a little dated. Vibes has a big, brash 1980s sensibility. This comes across in everything from the set design to the hair and especially the wardrobe. Cyndi Lauper is in this film, after all. Add in Jeff Goldblum in his Earth Girls Are Easy era and the fluorescent neon circle is complete. Do with that what you will. 

Now, as part of full film critic disclosure, Vibes does not make a great showing on Rotten Tomatoes. In fact, its 13 percent is more than a little daunting. While the movie earns tremendous goodwill for its unabashed personality, anyone coming to this for the action narrative will be left wanting.

RELATED: Retro Movie Review: Avalanche (1978)

The script, in particular, struggles with the treasure story. This is particularly noticeable deep in Act 2 as the final twist materializes seemingly out of nowhere. In truth, this plotline (and the characters stuck within it) feels like an afterthought. This becomes doubly frustrating as the film broadens its scope away from its adorable quirkiness. The narrative groundwork, unfortunately, hasn’t been laid to sustain a more traditional plot. 

When all is said and done, Vibes is a fun and pleasant surprise. This wacky little film came out of nowhere and ended up being an absolute pleasure to watch, thanks to this purely enjoyable cast. This film largely knows where its strength lies, and it isn’t afraid to let its characters steal the show. With a script that doesn’t pull its own weight, they are a welcomed distraction. Goldblum, Lauper and Falk are unapologetically themselves, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Vibes is now streaming on Tubi. 

Everything Coming to Netflix in September 2024

A film nerd from my earliest years watching Abbott and Costello, that eventually translated to a Master’s Degree in Film History. I spend my time working on my fiction projects in all their forms, as well as covering film and television.

Latest posts by Kimberly Pierce (see all)

When Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes) gets suspended from school after a political demonstration backfires, her mother (Susan Prior), who also happens to be the institution’s principal, sends the Sydney teenager to live with her cousin Taylah (Natalie Abbott) in the Australian outback.

Dunburn, the fictional locale in which Rebel Wilson’s uneven directorial debut The Deb is set, is a small town recovering from a years-long drought and dereliction of duty by national ministries. The local government desperately needs money to maintain their water supply and have resorted, in one of the film’s more humorous gags, to making a viral video to bring attention to their plight. Of course, none of these issues concern Maeve, who arrives in Dunburn already plotting her escape. 

Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Deb chronicles Maeve’s fish-out-of-water adventures in Dunburn. Upon arrival, the cosmopolitan teen loudly rejects the town’s regressive traditions. In particular, Maeve bemoans the annual debutante ball, which Taylah dreams of attending. She can’t understand why her cousin would submit herself to such retrograde pomp and circumstance. Soon, of course, Maeve realizes that she can’t so easily write this small town or its people off.

The Deb is based on the well-received stage musical of the same name by Hannah Reilly (who returns to write the screenplay) and Meg Washington (who serves as an executive producer). It’s a campy movie musical whose cultural self-awareness when it comes to teenage life might draw comparisons to this year’s Mean Girls musical adaptation but whose narrative owes much to Muriel’s Wedding. Taylah, like Muriel, is a big-hearted country girl who dreams of love and social acceptance — the kind of underdog screen protagonist who has become more common since P.J. Hogan’s 1994 film premiered at TIFF. 

Whereas Muriel wanted to get married, Taylah wants to find a date to the debutante ball, a tradition that makes her feel closer to her deceased mother. Her transformation and friendship with Maeve drive most of the film’s action and offer a heartwarming, if predictable, relationship to root for. It helps that MacInnes (who played Maeve in the stage production) and Abbott fully embrace their characters and the exaggerations required of the movie musical. Their performances, as well as a handful of others including Shane Jacobson as Taylah’s father Rick and Tara Morice as a local tailor, soften the film’s more glaring contrivances. 

Outside of the acting, which leans into the ridiculous and amplifies the campy nature of the film, The Deb struggles in its translation to the screen. The music is contemporary pastiche — riffing on different genres and arranged in ways that recall the Pitch Perfect covers — and although a handful are memorable, thoughts of many fade with the credits. Wilson’s direction is similarly uneven, especially toward the middle of the film, which packs in convenient plot points to distract from narrative thinness. The result is off-kilter pacing that threatens to undo the film’s more successful parts. 

Like this year’s Mean Girls, The Deb does successfully play with the tools of the social media age, adjusting the aspect ratio to mimic iPhones and incorporating the use of platforms like TikTok or Instagram into its storytelling. The film opens with a bullish pop number (one of the movie’s strongest) introducing Maeve’s world at an elite private school in Sydney. The new teenage experience involves documenting every aspect of their lives and engaging in Plastics-like mocking and cruelty.

The catch, of course, is that all of these students are hyper-attuned to injustice so they always punch up instead of down. Maeve’s popularity — both IRL and online — stems from her outspokenness on feminist issues. But she’s also a classic bully, and after one of her political acts goes awry, her classmates are more than eager to obliterate her reputation. In the spirit of the most high-profile cancellations of the 21st century, Maeve retreats from public life to reflect. 

The country air doesn’t suit our chronically online city girl, so from the moment Maeve arrives in Dunburn, she begins plotting her departure. She plans to make her great return to Sydney with a podcast that chronicles her small-town life and begins recording all of her interactions. She ropes in Taylah, making her journey to the deb ball the main narrative, and interviews the resident mean girls, Danielle (Brianna Bishop), Chantelle (Karis Oka), Annabelle, (Stevie Jean) and Annabelle’s mother Janette (played by Wilson), a beautician who makes Regina George seem angelic. As Maeve zips around town investigating, she’s also pursued by a bad boy named Mitch (Hal Cumpston), whom we never learn all that much about. 

A significant portion of The Deb’s plot revolves around Maeve keeping the true intentions of her podcast a secret while forming a genuine friendship with Taylah, but there are other narratives stuffed into this film. One involves the fate of Dunburn, which is in desperate need of government funds, and the other concerns a will-they-or-won’t-they romance between Rick and Shell (Morice), the town’s tailor. These threads are introduced with confident set pieces and catchy tunes that accompany decent choreography, but the balance is lost once the plot lines require more involvement. Despite its 2-hour runtime, parts of The Deb can feel frustratingly shallow. 

That could be forgiven if the rest of the movie meaningfully cohered, but it doesn’t. The Deb, much like Maeve’s experience in Dunburn, is ultimately a mixed bag. 

Saturdays are usually busy days for Alma’s Place, a soul food restaurant in Compton across from the city’s courthouse.

But roughly an hour into opening on June 22, Corina Pleasant, who runs the business with her mother Alma, noticed no customers were filing in. Their parking lot, which is shared with other small businesses in a strip mall, was overrun by cars and chaos as hundreds of people poured to the courthouse to catch a glimpse of rap star Kendrick Lamar, who was there to film the music video for “Not Like Us.”

Alma’s Place and other nearby businesses say they lost thousands of dollars that day. The business owners blame city officials for not providing any notice about the video shoot, which ultimately forced them to shut down operations. Now they’re asking Lamar, production company pgLang or the city to compensate them for their losses.

“It was really disheartening to have the electricity on and gas,” Pleasant said. “I’m just running everything and making no money. I literally was there for nothing, because the little money that I did make, I had to pay my staff with that.”

If she had been informed ahead of time, Pleasant said she could have preemptively closed for the day or set up a pop-up tent with a special menu.

She estimates she lost between $1,800 to $2,200 that day. Other business owners in the area told similar stories in testimony to the City Council and interviews with The Times.

A spokesperson for the City of Compton said in a statement that the city would identify “opportunities for more efficient film permit communication to our community” in the future.

“Businesses in Compton, especially small businesses, are the backbone of our city,” the statement said. “We want to continue to keep an open line of communication and do everything we can to support economic growth.”

Representatives for Lamar and pgLang did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Rumors of Lamar’s video shoot had been circulating online since at least June 17, building up anticipation for the rapper’s appearance in his hometown following his highly publicized feud with Drake.

Compton officials issued a film permit certificate June 21 for several locations in the center of the city: the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at the courthouse, Compton Courtyard and parking structure, Tam’s Burgers on Rosecrans Avenue, Compton College, Central Avenue, Willowbrook Avenue and Compton Boulevard.

The next day, more than 700 people arrived at the courthouse to be featured in the video. Nearby parking lots were packed to the brim, with some people even parking their vehicles on grass.

Lamar began filming at Tam’s Burgers and other areas earlier in the afternoon before heading over to the courthouse around 3 p.m., where the large crowd was waiting for him.

Pleasant closed her restaurant hours earlier. Spectators had overflowed the shopping center’s parking lot, turning into a one-way street, obstructing access to fire lanes and Dumpsters and trapping vehicles that were already parked, she said. Customers, many of whom often drive from Riverside and Orange County to dine at Alma’s Place on weekends, turned around and left.

“One day does matter,” Pleasant said. “It does matter when you’re there, and you’re wasting your time. It does matter when your Edison bill is $1,000. It does matter when two weeks’ payroll for three people is nearly $3,000. It does matter when gas is $800. You’re there, all these things are running, and you have nothing to show for it.”

Adelfo Antonio Garcia, a co-owner of Sunny Express Gourmet Fast Food, said he lost about $2,000 that day as well. And customers still believe he’s closed on Saturdays.

Garcia called the situation frustrating because his restaurant was already struggling to get by. The city’s lack of communication was unacceptable, he said.

“The people who suffer are the small businesses,” he said in Spanish.

Alma Pleasant attended a City Council meeting the following Tuesday to share her disappointment with city officials, who she said needed to “get it together.”

“I’m here because three things affected me on Saturday,” she said during public comment. “And when those three things affect me, I’m coming in full force. One, my kids. Two, my money. Three, my food.”

It is not mandatory for production companies to pay impacted businesses, according to Kathryn Arnold, a producer and entertainment consultant unaffiliated with Lamar. However, filmmakers do sometimes compensate businesses as a sign of good will.

“Everybody does better when there’s clear communication,” Arnold said. “Nobody likes to be blindsided by something like this.”