NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

edina m. Interesting to watch this movie 24 years after it was released. It really 'spoke' to me when I was a teenager. What I found interesting watching it as an adult was how much I agreed with Mark (Christian Slater) about how strange it is to live in Arizona. He keeps telling his parents: 'People are weird here, I can't talk to anyone, they don't understand me.' I'm sure it was only a way to make him seem at odds with his classmates. But so peculiar that I feel the same way as an adult living in Arizona and coming from the mid-west. People in Arizona are strange, and very different...definitely not easy to get along with. Nobody gets me here...this was an unexpected feeling as I watched this again and was able to connect to the main character on a different level than as a teenager.

FlashCallahan Mark has just moved to Arizona from the East Coast. His parents give him a short-wave radio so he can talk to his pals. But he sets up a pirate Station, going under the pseudonym of D.J. Hard Harry, and becomes a hero to his peers while inspiring the wrath of the local high school principal. When one of Harry's listeners commits suicide and chaos breaks out at the school, the authorities are called in to put a stop to Harry's broadcasts....Made in a time when Slater was at the height of his Heartthrob-ness, and to be fair he was a pretty big deal in the early nineties (if you were fifteen), The film is like a big sunshine Strawberry smoothie, with a little teen angst thrown in.Slater does channel a kind of profane, alcohol induced Spider-man in his performance. By day, a shy, spectacle wearing back of the class type student, by night, well, you get the gist.And he has never been better, and I really don't know what happened from there. His Harry is something many the targeted demographic could only dream of doing.He's honest, funny, sympathetic, and full of empathy, yet he still inspires anarchy across the very small town, and obviously, it irks the older population of the town.The soundtrack too, is wonderful, playing a kind of narrative in itself, and only adds a little more depth to the film.There are minor flaws in the film, stereotypes are rife throughout the film, but it wasn't aimed at most people, it was aimed at misunderstood teens, and at one point in our lives, we were one of those.Still cool 23 years on....

bkoganbing In a career dotted with offbeat and quirky roles Christian Slater was at his most offbeat and quirky in Pump Up The Volume. Slater plays a young transfer student from an eastern high school to a new school in Arizona. His Clark Kent persona is a mild mannered wallflower type. But his father made the mistake of giving him a short wave radio set to keep in touch with friends back east who are presumably ham radio operators. What Slater does is create his own pirate radio station and starts with another whole personality of disc jockey Harry Hardon. Slater's other self isn't Superman, he's more like a teenage version of Howard Beale from Network.He's amusing at first until one of the students commits suicide after calling in and Slater does little to discourage his intentions. That's a hard call to make, even professionals miss telltale signs of that kind of serious depression.But when Slater starts disrupting the power structure in the person of principal Annie Ross, the hunt is on with even the Federal Communications Commission brought in to track down this broadcasting felon. Imagine Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest as a school principal and you've got Ross. The main weakness of Pump Up The Volume is that Slater and Ross create the only two memorable characters. All the rest are strictly in support, we get no insights into any of the rest of the cast. But these two are memorable characters. A teenage mad prophet of the air and a school principal from hell.Pump Up The Volume is a staple for Christian Slater fans.

bevelswes I like the movie, "Pump Up the Volume", it's a good movie in the decade right now in 2011, this is my favorite film still, Christian Slater's brilliant performance in this 1990 comedy/drama, Slater played as Mark Hunter, a shy high school student who's a independent and quiet young student, but at night he became pirate radio VJ, Hard Harry, and Hard Harry had a voice sound like Jack Nicholson, Samantha Mathis in her film debut as Nora, Nora is sweet, but she is wild, the soundtrack in the movie is great, I like the songs in the film including Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows, Ice-T, Beastie Boys, and Was Not Was' Dad, I'm in Jail, and the songs also was featured in the soundtrack album also including artists like Soundgraden, Liquid Jesus, Sonic Youth, Above The Law, Peter Murphy, and more, Plot is great, I like this movie a lot.