YMMV / Can't Buy Me Love

• Anvilicious
  Ron: Cools, Nerds, your side, my side, man it's all bullshit. It's just tough enough to be yourself.
• Designated Hero: For most of the movie, Ron acts like a complete jerk.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Cindy getting drunk at the New Year's Eve party. In real life, Amanda Peterson struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse, and ultimately died in 2015 of a drug overdose.
• Hollywood Homely: Ron. Even in the middle of puberty, Patrick Dempsey is still Patrick Dempsey.
• Retroactive Recognition: Seth Green plays Ron's little brother.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Ron learns an African dance from what he thinks is American Bandstand, which would cease production at the end of the 1980s.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In the movie's climactic confrontation, Ron talks a jock into not harassing the nerds, and gets his attention by slamming a baseball bat on a table a few times. While he never swings it at anybody, he could be treated as a real threat and potentially get arrested and expelled from school.
  • The word "retard" is casually thrown around. These days, that would definitely be seen as a slur.

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