Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Can't Buy Me Love

When Disney first announced the formation of Touchstone Films back in 1984, they assured a concerned public that they would stay away from genres like horror and raunchy teen comedies. It’s important to understand that at the time, horror films meant slasher flicks and teen comedies referred to T&A-paloozas like Porky’s and Spring Break. In other words, no gratuitous sex or violence, please. We’re still Disney.

If Can’t Buy Me Love had been made a few years earlier, it absolutely would have fallen squarely in the R-rated teen comedy camp. In fact, as Michael Swerdlick’s script, originally titled Boy Rents Girl, made its way through the development process, it got progressively dirtier with each revision. If that version had been made, it’s fair to say it would have been just another movie in a long line of now-semi-forgotten comedies. Instead, it became a sleeper hit and cult favorite among members of the VHS generation.