One thing I’m falling into the habit of, because of the podcast, I mean, is taking meticulous notes on the movies I’m watching. That’s because the format of the show entails discussing each scene beat by beat; I’m about to finish my second notebook and start my third because of how many slutty little fuckin notes I’m taking.

However these mini blog entries are not podcast notes. So I’m not like, pausing Tuff Turf every twenty seconds to memorialize every move every character makes on my messy notebook pages. And that’s too bad because there was SO MUCH of this movie that I was absolutely gaga over, but I watched it two nights ago and now I’m sad coz I know I’ll never remember it all. And my brain is starting to compulsively need to keep notes like that, even for non-pod movies. Maybe I’ll cover it at some point. I had never seen this movie before.

In TT, Spader plays Morgan, a kinda troubled kid from Connecticut who’s recently moved to the mean streets of… Reseda. This movie literally starts with a shot of the Reseda Yarn Shop. This must be a real culture shock to Morgan and his family, coz they’re the type of hoity-toity that pronounces that middle C in Connecticut. I don’t know anyone in real life who does that. It’s like saying Wed-NES-day. The Hiller fam has recently lost their business, so Reseda it is I guess. I once went to a really amazing indie wrestling show in an American Legion hall in Reseda. It was not air conditioned and it had to have been 10000 degrees in there. They filmed a Mad Men episode in that Legion hall once. Anyway it’s not there anymore, and I’m guessing the yarn shop isn’t, either. So it goes.

Morgan becomes pals with Jimmy (Robert Downey Jr.) and immediately rides his bike into an ongoing street-gang-mugging-some-businessman situaish. He stops it of course, and the gang leader, Nick— leader of the TUFFS, you see—is piiiiiiiissed. And worse, Morgan soon falls for Nick’s girlfriend, the amazingly-styled Frankie (Kim Richards, you know, of RHOBH fame. Justice for Kim!! I love you Kim!!!!). And if you think Nick is gonna let that slide, you’re wrong.

Now, there’s a lot of funny things about this movie. First of all, some graffiti at the high school says THE NEW AVENGERS… what did they know? The Tuffs seem very adamant about attending school, which, in my experience with tuffs, is not usually the case. Also, Morgan gets yelled at by the security guard for riding his bicycle on campus but no one seems to car that the Tuffs are drag racing in the parking lot. ALSO, at one point Frankie’s dad is overjoyed that Nick wants to marry her. She’s like 17 1/2 but ok!!!!

Tuff Turf is 40 minutes too long. ALSO, I keep writing TERF, not turf. That annoys me coz I fucking hate TERFs and don’t want to think about them. If you’re a TERF and you’re reading this please know I hate you.

But there’s a lot of great things going for this movie. There’s an incredible scene where Morgan, Frankie, Jimmy, and a sassy Tuff-adjacent gal named who rules named Ronnie sneak into a country club and shmooze it up, which leads to some frank blow-job talk from the gals and very, flamboyantly spirited performance from Spader (as well as some stolen lobsters, which.. I get it). There’s also an incredible amount of musical performance and a dance scene that gets posted to Instagram a lot.

There’s a fight/shootout scene at the end and blah blah blah love beats the demon and by then I was ready for bed. This movie didn’t have to be so long, but it really was a delight. There are a lot of men in shockingly short crop tops in Tuff Turf and I think I may need to explore this in a later and more focused essay (I didn’t screen grab them but trust me, they’re there). I loved this movie though, and it’s currently at the top of my ranking for the month’s movies so far.

It’s on Tubi. Watch it. It rules!

PS please ignore any typos I’m so tired