Winkast/M-G-M. Director Robert Boris; Producer Cassian Elwes, Elliott Kastner; Screenplay Robert Boris; Camera John Stanier; Editor Patrick Moore; Music John DuPrez; Art Director Terry Pritchard
Rob Lowe
Ally Sheedy
Amanda Pays
Julian Sands
Julian Firth
Alan Howard
At heart, Oxford Blues is really Rocky Goes to College. Though source material is M-G-M's 1938 Robert Taylor starrer, A Yank at Oxford, treatment is decidedly modern. Director-writer Robert Boris fails to establish a consistent tone to make his fairytale story believable.
In the original film, Lionel Barrymore borrows the cash to send athlete son Taylor over to Oxford. In Oxford Blues, Lowe, a valet at the Dunes Hotel in Vegas, hustles the money at the crap table from a stake put up by an older woman (Gail Strickland) who picks him up. Nick's real reason for going to England is not to crew and certainly not for an education (students never seem to study in this film), but to chase his dreamgirl, aristocrat covergirl Lady Victoria (Amanda Pays). Climax proves the hero has the right stuff to get the girl. Only the girl turns out to be another American (Ally Sheedy). Must be a moral in there somewhere.
Lowe is suitably nasty as the streetwise Nick in a way that often passes for charm in films like this.
(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1984. Running time: 93 MIN.
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