Let's get this out of the way, right off the top: by just about any reasonable person's standards, Hiding Out is not a terribly good movie. The tone is all over the place, dialogue is frequently clunky, and there are plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. But if you are of a certain age, and you saw Hiding Out at a certain time, there's a good chance that none of that will matter to you. It certainly didn't to me. I was about 13 years old when it first hit HBO and, well, they played it a lot. At that tender age and at that point in the late 1980s, Hiding Out was about just about everything you could ask for in a movie: it had big, dumb laughs, there was a cute girl, there were shoot-outs and a mob subplot, and it starred Ducky from Pretty in Pink. My criterion for quality filmmaking has changed quite a bit in the interim, but I'm afraid that my affection for this particular film has not.

Jon Cryer stars as Andrew Morenski, a Boston stock broker who has, along with a pair of his colleagues, gotten mixed up with a mobster about to go to trial. They're testifying against him, which may not be the wisest idea, since one of them gets shot point-blank in the head by his goons (this comes at about the eight-minute mark, getting us right into the mood for some zany high school laughs). Andrew and the other remaining broker are hustled into protective custody by the FBI, but when Andrew and his G-men sneak out of the safe house for breakfast, the hit men follow suit; shots are fired, Andrew crashes through a window, they chase him, he jumps on a train, and barely escapes, as is so prone to happen... IN MOVIES.

In a scene that pre-dates the Harrison Ford version of The Fugitive by five years, Andrew takes a razor and some hair dye into a convenience store restroom and shaves his hilariously fake beard, gives his coif some 80s blonde patches, and comes out looking like a baby-faced proto-hipster. His plan is to meet up with his aunt, a high school nurse, but when he wanders into the school office, he is mistaken for a student--and gets an idea. He makes up a new name (Maxwell Hauser--swiped off a coffee can), tells the registrar that his records "could take weeks," and disguises himself as a new student.

Director Bob Giraldi (notorious as the director of that Pepsi ad where Michael Jackson's hair went up in flames) certainly knows from pace; the movie zips right through its 99 minutes without pausing much for consistency or logic, but it's certainly entertaining. Being a late 80s action/comedy, Giraldi goes heavy on the pop-song montage as a storytelling tool, showing Andrew/Max's seemingly effortless rise to popularity--he quickly catches the eye of lovely, brainy Ryan (Annabeth Gish), while his cousin Patrick (Keith Coogan) and his homeboys decide to run Max for class president against jock dullard (and Ryan's soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend) Kevin O'Roarke (Tim Quill). His reluctant campaign, while ultimately necessary for the film's required action-and-thrills climax, is wrapped up in a howling logical error that escaped me on all my previous viewings: this is a senior class presidential election taking place late in their senior year (Ryan, who is in the same class, has already been accepted into her dream college). Class elections are for the following year. Will Max be class president for the last month or two of the school year, or what?

The unseemly implications of our pushing-30 hero dating a high school girl are also rather cheerfully ignored, aside from his insistence that he is acting like a "perfect gentleman" in their relationship. Their story takes an unfortunate turn to goofy melodrama in the third act, done no favors by the unfortunate synth-heavy romantic score (it's pretty bombastic the rest of the time). That said, there's a genuine sweetness to their relationship, which generates some real chemistry--and some honest-to-goodness laughs, particularly with its nice twist on the meeting-her-dad scene.

We Gen-Xers love our 80s movie soundtracks, and this one has some nice touches, from the period pop/camp of "Catch Me I'm Falling" to the genuine loveliness of Roy Orbison's remake of "Crying" as a duet with k.d. lang. The film veers wildly from the broad comedy of the high school plot (cousin Patrick's attempts to get a driver's license are plenty goofy and not terribly enjoyable) to the action elements of the half-assed Mob plot, but that was fairly typical of the time as well--even a comparatively well-reviewed action/comedy like Beverly Hills Cop looks like a mess today, tonally speaking.

So what's to recommend, aside from nostalgia? Well, the performers are awfully likable. Coogan's obnoxious schtick gets old quick, but he's about the only speed-bump in this cast; Cryer is charming and charismatic (even if his voice is a little too squeaky to be a convincing businessman in the opening scenes), and Gish, who never quite became the star she should have, brings some depth and believability to a fairly thin role. Also of note is Quill, who invests his antagonist with some real humanity instead of playing him as the expected William Zabka-style jock jerk. There's also some fun early work by performers of note, including Joy Behar as a diner waitress and The West Wing's John Spenser as the FBI man assigned to Max (although he's a long way from Sorkin with lines like "That son of a bitch of a bastard killed my partner!").

Hiding Out is an easy film to pick holes in, but you can't deny that it works. Its jokes miss as often as they hit, but there's a good-natured charm to the proceedings that keeps us involved through the dull spots. Much of it, like the big action climax, is pretty ridiculous, but it's put together with enough breezy skill that you don't mind so much. Then again, it could just be me. I saw it at the right age.

Hiding Out was previously released on DVD in 2001; it's now being re-released with several other titles as part of Lionsgate's new "Lost Collection" (the series tagline boasts that these are the "best films you totally forgot about," an assessment that might be argued by anyone who has ever seen fellow "Lost Collection" titles like Repossessed and Homer & Eddie). Based on what we've been hearing about the A/V quality of some of the other titles in the series, I'm betting we're not getting a new transfer or mixes here.

The 1.85:1 anamorphic image is a little on the grainy side, but not bad overall--contrast is fine and black levels are solid, though I spotted a couple of flash-frame digital glitches and some blotchiness in the skin tones. Both are fleeting and not particularly distracting, though; it's a pretty good transfer, though the movie certainly looks its age.

The 5.1 audio track is unimpressive; it's mighty front-heavy, with little to no action in the back speakers, even in scenes (like the big climax or Patrick's driving lesson) with heavy effects and opportunities for directionality and separation. However, the front speakers sound decent, with music crisp and the center dialogue channel clear, if occasionally on the thin side.

As with the other "Lost Collection" titles, Hiding Out includes a Trivia Track subtitle option. It's a bit of a non-starter; basically, it amounts to filmography information about the cast and crew in the form of multiple choice and true/false questions. The tidbits are few and far between, and stay up on screen long enough for your average kindergartener to read them six or seven times.

The only other extras are a Theatrical Trailer (1:23), very much of its time (and therefore a treat for bad trailer junkies like myself), and trailers for some other Lionsgate releases.

It's hard to know whether to genuinely recommend Hiding Out. If you're not the right age for it or don't cotton to 80s artifacts, chances are you're not missing much. But if you harbor fond memories of its upteen cable showings, or if you just can't get enough late-80s Cryer (I'm looking at you, Ducky fanatics), this one is recommended, and heartily. You know who you are.

Jason lives in New York. He holds an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from NYU.