The Raunchy 80s Rom Com That’s Extreme Lust Gone Wrong

By Robert Scucci
| Published 8 seconds ago

Overprotective parents are tough nuts to crack. On one hand, can you really blame a mom or dad for trying to shelter their children from the horrors of the world, no matter how misguided their attempts may be? On the other hand, sometimes you’ve just got to push the baby bird out of the nest and see if they can fly on their own. In more extreme cases, you might have to fool your daughter into thinking that whenever she’s aroused, she’ll burst into flames, like in 1987’s Nice Girls Don’t Explode.

Nice Girls Don’t Explode is a rom-com that hinges on this single joke, and then runs it into the ground. It’s one of those fascinating situations where the joke wears out its welcome in the first act, you check the seeker bar in the second act to see how much more you have to endure, and then somehow it brings things back around by the third. It’s like when you say a single word over and over again until it loses all meaning, but only before the exercise makes you realize everything is meaningless, and you and the word become one in an almost zen-like state. 

At least that’s what I felt at my core while watching Nice Girls Don’t Explode.

Don’t Forget Your Fire Extinguisher! 

Every source I can find clocks Nice Girls Don’t Explode at 92 minutes, but the version streaming on Tubi runs only 82. This could mean one of two things: the sources are wrong, or there’s a longer cut floating around somewhere. I’m hoping it’s the former, because since the entire movie is built around one joke repeating itself ad nauseam, any extended version would likely be more of the same. Worse, if that footage was cut for pacing, it probably wasn’t doing the movie any favors.

Speaking of the joke, here’s what it is. April Flowers (Michelle Meyrink) has a rare disorder where her surroundings burst into flames whenever she’s sexually aroused. Or so she thinks. In reality, her overprotective mother (Barbara Harris) rigs plastic explosives and detonates them remotely to scare off potential suitors. She follows April on dates and gets trigger-happy with her detonator, sending her daughter home dejected after every disaster.

When her old neighbor and romantic interest Andy (William O’Leary) returns to town before securing his ping pong scholarship in China, the two hit it off. It doesn’t take long for Mother to fall back into her old habits. She continues to gaslight April with staged explosions, even going as far as lighting the cat on fire, but Andy starts to catch on when he realizes these incidents never happen when Mom isn’t around.

The rest of the movie follows that same pattern. Andy gets closer to exposing Mother, she retaliates, and he ends up humiliated in the process. He’s caught with his pants down more than once, but it’s never what it looks like. Andy is just clumsy, and April’s manipulative mother uses that to her advantage. Determined to live life on their own terms, April and Andy decide to do the unthinkable by having sex to prove Mother wrong, assuming she doesn’t sabotage them first.

A One-Note Joke Done To Death

Nice Girls Don’t Explode is more fun than I’d care to admit, but I’d be lying if I said it was a good movie. Barbara Harris, Michelle Meyrink, and William O’Leary clearly understood the assignment, and their chemistry carries the film even when it’s just beating a dead horse. It’s a mindless, low-stakes romp that never really crosses the line into being offensive, but it is surprisingly risqué for something rated PG.

It’s not going to change your life, and some of the gags, like the first-act restaurant scene, actually land. This isn’t an intelligent movie. There’s no subtext or ambiguity hiding beneath the surface. And sometimes that’s exactly what you need after burning through your mental energy all day. 

Most importantly, Nice Girls Don’t Explode is streaming for free on Tubi, so it won’t cost you anything but your time.