Oxford Blues * (1984, Rob Lowe, Julian Sands, Michael Gough, Ally Sheedy, Amanda Pays, Gail Strickland, Alan Howard, Julian Firth, Cary Elwes) – So Bad It’s Good 14

Blues is right. The 1984 So Bad It’s Good movie Oxford Blues is likely to give you them. The young Rob Lowe is an unlikely Oxford student, but he is effectively slimy in a tweak on the old Robert Taylor part of an American at Oxford University, in this poorly written and badly performed, pointless 1984 updated remake of the 1938 MGM movie A Yank at Oxford.

Sad to say that co-star Julian Sands is embarrassing as the British upper-class twit of a student, Colin Gilchrist Fisher, who is giving cocky young Californian casino stud Lowe a tough time at Oxford.

In 1938 Robert Taylor was then brash young American aristocrat Lee Sheridan in A Yank at Oxford. But now Lowe stars as hustler Nick De Angelo, who is working in a Las Vegas casino where he falls for the English noblewoman of his dreams and tries to earn enough money to pursue her to Oxford, England, where for some reason he believes the only way to win her is to get into Oxford University and join the rowing team. But Lady Victoria is involved with Colin, a member of Christ Church College and another Oxford rower.

Michael Gough seems very bemused as the lad Nick’s tutor, as well he might be, while Amanda Pays (as the pretty Lady Victoria Wingate), Ally Sheedy (as the American girl Rona who is the cox of the rowing team) and Gail Strickland (as an older woman chasing Lowe in Vegas) have a poor time with the even more feebly written women’s parts. But, to be fair, Alan Howard, Julian Firth and Cary Elwes (as Lionel) fare no better.

The rowing sequences are straight out of a Carry On film, which could also have had fun with the cox of the rowing team and Aubrey Morris’s character name of Doctor Quentin Boggs. And the film’s hopeless sense of Oxford geography is highly entertaining. And yet somehow it is all sneakily very entertaining and amusing, especially for those who like laughing at bad movies. Yes, it’s another So Bad It’s Good classic.

Writer-director Robert Boris is the man to blame.

Also in the cast are Julian Firth as Geordie Nevitts, Aubrey Morris as Doctor Quentin Boggs, Anthony Calf as Gareth Rycroft, Bruce Payne as Peter Howles, Pip Torrens as Ian, Peter Jason as Mr De Angelo, Carrie Jones as Sandra, Alan Howard as Simon Rutledge, Peter Hugo-Daly as Malcolm, Sonia Smyles as Rita, and Richard Hunt as Larry.

De Angelo is accepted into Oriel College, where large parts of the film are set.

Lady Victoria Wingate’s character is inspired by Princess Stéphanie of Monaco.

It is the first feature as a producer for Cassian Elwes, the brother of Cary Elwes, who appears in the film as Lionel.

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