Just One of the Guys (1985)

A 1985 teen comedy about a high-school girl who dresses up as a boy to transfer to a different school and write a serious news story, because her journalism teacher at her own school will not take her seriously. The film is honest about what the joke costs, and the honesty is the part most 80s comedies of the gender-swap type were not willing to pay.

What the film does

Joyce Hyser plays Terri Griffith, the smart girl, a high-school journalist whose teacher at her own school will not let her write the serious story she wants to write. He tells her she is good at makeup, fashion, and home economics, and the film is not subtle about which part of that sentence is the insult. Terri transfers to a different school disguised as her brother, who is away at football camp, and enrolls in journalism class as a boy named Terry. The class is taught by a new teacher, played by Clayton Rohner, who is supposed to be the love interest.

The film is interested in the disguise as a way of seeing what the boys actually do when they think no girl is in the room. The film is not surprised that what the boys do is mostly dumb. The film is also not surprised that what the boys do is occasionally real. The film is not interested in the romance as a surprise. The romance is the point of the film and the romance is allowed to be the point. The film is interested in the journalist realizing she has spent so much time fighting for credibility that she has lost the actual story. The actual story is the kid in her journalism class who is being hurt at home and the boy she meets at the new school who is more than the joke he appears to be. The film finds the real story in the middle of the bit, and the find is what the film is for.

The third act is the reveal, and the reveal is real. The audience already knows Terri is a girl. The new school knows. The love interest knows by the middle of the film. The third act is the original school, the teacher who dismissed her, the news story that she filed from the disguise, and the audience getting to watch the dismissal turn into something else. The something else is the film’s main event.

Why it’s in the canon

Criteria blend is 1+3, loved it and want to remember it. A good 80s comedy that is about equality of the sexes in the way the film itself is about equality of the sexes, which is to say the film trusts the actress to play the role and the director to direct the role and the audience to follow the film without being told what to think. The film does not lecture. The film tells the joke and lets the joke be the lecture. The film is also the rare 80s teen comedy directed by a woman, and the woman-directing shows up in the way the film looks at the boys and in the way the film does not punish the girl for being the smartest person in the room. The director is a woman and the director knows the girl is the smartest person in the room because the director is the smartest person in the room.

The film is a teen comedy. The teen comedy is allowed to be a teen comedy. The film is not a coming-of-age drama pretending to be a teen comedy, and the film is not a gender-studies essay pretending to be a teen comedy. The film is a teen comedy that has something to say about gender and the film says it through the comedy. The combination is rare and the combination is the reason the film is in the canon.

A note on the year

The film is 1985. The Wikipedia article is the 1985 film. We use 1985.

A note on disambiguation

This is the 1985 Lisa Gottlieb film starring Joyce Hyser. There is no other feature film of this title in the same year. The 2009 Lifetime TV movie of the same name is unrelated.

On hand

Yes, DVD + digital. The DVD is the Sony release. The digital copy is the same transfer, no extras.