1986’s Something Wild opens with Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels) eating lunch in a New York diner.

Charlie is a stockbroker.  He wears a suit.  He’s quiet and mild-mannered.  He just got a promotion at work.  He carries a picture of his kids in his wallet.  Everything about Charlie shouts that he’s a nice guy who is extremely conventional in his outlook and behavior.  But then, Charlie sneaks out of the diner without paying and is spotted by a woman (Melanie Griffith) who says that her name is Lulu.

Dressed in black and with a brunette bob that makes her look like Louis Brooks (and which is later revealed to be a wig), Lulu chases after Charlie.  She offers him a ride back to his job, downtown.  However, when Charlie gets in the car, Lulu instead speeds off towards New Jersey.  Lulu grabs Charlie beeper and throws it away.  (I guess that was the 80s equivalent of stealing someone’s phone.)  She stops off at a liquor store and robs the place while Charlie unknowingly waits out in the car.  She takes him to a motel and, after handcuffing to the bed, has sex with him and calls his office….

And then the film takes an unexpected turn.  What started out as one of those NSFW stories that occasionally cropped up on Internet message boards suddenly turns into a quirky slice of Americana.  Lulu and Charlie head to Pennsylvania for Lulu’s high school reunion.  Lulu reveals that her real name is Audrey and she’s actually blonde.  Audrey introduces Charlie to her family as being her husband and Charlie plays along with her.  At the reunion, Charlie turns out to be just as skillful a liar as Audrey.  But there’s nothing particularly mean-spirited about their lies.  Audrey wanted to be able to brag about having a wonderful husband at her reunion and Charlie, whose wife left him for a dentist, wanted to pretend that he was still married and still a regular part of his children’s lives.  The reunion itself is a masterful set piece, one in which director Jonathan Demme balances his trademark quirky humor with a genuine love for small town American.  With the old school bands playing in front of an American flag, Demme transforms the reunion into a metaphor for everything good about this country.  It’s a place where two lonely people can find each other.  The weekend may have started out like a middle-aged man’s fantasy but Charlie finds himself falling in love with the real Audrey.  It’s very sweet and humorous and it makes you feel good about life in general….

And then Ray shows up and the film takes another unexpected turn.  Played by Ray Liotta, Ray is Audrey’s ex-husband.  He’s a charmer, as one might expect from a character played by a young Ray Liotta.  Ray is friendly with Charlie, telling him stories about how wild Audrey was in high school.  It’s only as the night progresses that it becomes obvious that Ray is a sadistic sociopath and he wants Audrey back.

The violence in the film’s second half is a bit jarring.  After the good-natured, screwball comedy of the film’s first 50 minutes, it’s shocking to suddenly see Ray pistol-whipping a clerk and then breaking Charlie’s nose.  At the same time, meeting Ray allows us to know what it was that attracted Audrey to Charlie.  Charlie is the opposite of Ray, a good man who truly cares about other people.  Ray is the type of bad boy who is very attractive when you don’t know any better.  Charlie is the guy who seems conventional but, underneath it all, turns out to be something wild as well.

Directed by Jonathan Demme, Something Wild has a good eye for the quirkiness of America.  It portrays the world out of New York with love and none of the condescension that tends to show up in so many other road trip movies.  Daniels, Griffith, and the much-missed Ray Liotta all gives performance that take the viewer by surprise.  None of them are who we originally assume them to be and Griffith’s deconstruction of the type of character who would later be termed a “manic pixie dream girl” is probably her best and most honest performance.  Even Ray, for all his violent tendencies, has moments of humanity.  Something Wild is a celebration of life, rebellion, and love.  Like Charlie and Audrey, it’s more than worth taking a chance on.