Do you remember Amanda Peterson?

[odanny]

If you remember the movie "Can't Buy Me Love" with Patrick Dempsey, you know who I'm talking about.

Can't Buy Me Love (1987) ⭐ 6.8 | Comedy, Drama, Romance

1h 34m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

Had no idea what happened to her until today.

 

[rightwinger]

Never heard of her

 

[Auld Phart]

beautiful girl, nice talent

 

[boevans]

Nope

 

[Rodimus]

If you remember the movie "Can't Buy Me Love" with Patrick Dempsey, you know who I'm talking about.

Can't Buy Me Love (1987) ⭐ 6.8 | Comedy, Drama, Romance

1h 34m | PG-13

www.imdb.com

Had no idea what happened to her until today.

i remember that movie. i did not know that about her life and death. May she Rest In Peace and happiness in Heaven.

 

[odanny]

i remember that movie. i did not know that about her life and death. May she Rest In Peace and happiness in Heaven.

It was one of those goofy 80's movies that some people will always remember, like the Breakfast Club, and I only remembered her from this one movie, which I remember well. She was so pretty and, once again, Hollywood and drugs cause a premature death. She really spiraled downward too.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I have seen this before somewhere, might have been some documentary on child actors that fell apart when they grew up.
I can't say I remember her in any TV/movies

 

[Rodimus]

It was one of those goofy 80's movies that some people will always remember, like the Breakfast Club, and I only remembered her from this one movie, which I remember well. She was so pretty and, once again, Hollywood and drugs cause a premature death. She really spiraled downward too.

i remember the bullying of Patrick Dempsey's character and his friends in the movie. it was tragic and traumatic for me because i was bullied in my all-boys high school. .

 

[Bob Blaylock]

It was one of those goofy 80's movies that some people will always remember, like the Breakfast Club, and I only remembered her from this one movie, which I remember well. She was so pretty and, once again, Hollywood and drugs cause a premature death. She really spiraled downward too.

Can't Buy Me Love was an interesting, unique twist, on a basic plotline that had become very common, even cliché, in that sort of movie, in that period.

The usual version, in its simplest form, was that a nerdy high school boy thinks he's in love with the most popular girl at his school; and the whole story is how he wins her heart.

A slightly more sophisticated form of the story has him, along the way, coming to realize that the popular girl isn't really all that he thought she was, not really worthy of him, and by the way, there's some other girl that he had been overlooking all along, that is really the right girl for him.*

In Can't Buy Me Love, the nerdy guy isn't really that interested in the popular girl (played by Ms. Peterson). He wants to escape his nerdism, and become part of the cool, popular crowd. He makes a deal with the popular girl, that for a month she will pretend to be his girlfriend, as a way of getting him accepted among the popular, non-nerd types.

During that month, she falls in love with him, and he's too self-absorbed, and too focused on his purpose of escaping the “nerd” status, to even notice or care. The deal was that after a month, they were going to make a public show of breaking up; and at that time, he does publicly dump her, not noticing or caring that by this point, she doesn't want to break up with him. He goes on, for a while, to enjoy his status as one of the “cool” guys.

Much drama later he comes to realize that being “cool” really wasn't what he thought it was. Eventually, toward the end, he reconciles with his former fellow-nerd friends (who he had treated very badly during his “cool” phase, gets back together with the popular girl, and it is left implied that they lived happily ever after.

———
* There is another movie, that I don't know how many times I watched it before I came to realize that it is this same story, in a completely different setting. The movie is Stardust. Instead of a modern high school, it's set in a sort of Medieval/Fantasy setting. The main character is a Medieval version of a nerd, who thinks he's in love with the prettiest and most popular girl in his village. He goes on an epic, magical adventure, to prove himself worthy to her, and earn her hand in marriage. In the course of that adventure, he meets and falls in love with a different girl, and on returning to his village, he realizes that the first girl really wasn't all that she thought he was, no match at all for the second girl.