At my school, I had a chance to teach The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton this year. I had not taught the book since 1999. After we finished the unit, we watched the movie. So over the last two days I watched the Francis Ford Coppola film three times. I knew that I had not seen this movie in a long time so I figured that I had never reviewed the film. This is the chance.

Honestly, I did not love this. My memory was that the first time I watched this, I thought this was better than I did this time.

According to IMDB, “It is 1961, and Tulsa, Oklahoma is divided in two along social lines. The youths of each side form gangs in line with these two camps: the working class Greasers and the wealthier South Side gang, the Socs. The two sides use any opportunity to niggle each other and whenever they meet, there is friction. Then one night, a gang of Socs attack two Greasers with a knife. This sets off a chain of events“

There were several things that bugged me about this movie. Top of the list was probably the performance from Matt Dillion as Dally Winston, which felt about as over the top as it could possibly be. His overacting really bothered me in most of the scenes he was in.

The second thing I noticed was the horrendous sound mixing. There are several times that I couldn’t understand or hear certain lines of dialogue from characters because of the music or because it was just too messy.

I also feel like they did not do a service to a bunch of the characters from the book. Sure, I understand they wanted to focus on the main characters, but Sodapop was neglected and he should be a more vital part of the story. I do not feel that they did a good job of connecting Johnny to any other character outside of Ponyboy and Dally.

I do think that C. Thomas Howell was excellent as Ponyboy, and I loved Ralph Macchio as Johnny. I thought Macchio was really consistently good for the scenes that he was in. I will say though, one of the moments of the church fire, Johnny moved through just like Daniel LaRusso moved through the storm in Karate Kid II. That was funny to me. Anyway, Macchio was really good as the doomed Johnny.

Patrick Swayze had some good scenes, but could have used more time. Tom Cruise was in the film, but he was basically a background guy. Emilio Estevez was in the film as Two-Bit and, again, was just a shadow of the character of the book. I understand there is just not enough time for every character to be illuminated, but I do think we should have a bit more from these major characters.

It felt too melodramatic for my tastes. It was still a decent movie, but I found it to be nowhere as effective as the first time I watched it years ago.