The 80s were all about teen flicks, usually starring brat-pack actors and directed by John Hughes. ‘Say Anything,' although of this genre, was slightly different. For one thing, it was written and directed by Cameron Crowe, a former Rolling Stone writer who went on to make the much-acclaimed ‘Jerry Maguire.' For another, there wasn't a single brat-pack actor in its credits.

The basic storyline is hardly original. Boy Gets Girl. Boy Loses Girl. Boy Gets Girl Back. What makes it different is who plays the boy: John Cusack. At the time he was a little-known actor. When the film came out, he was on his way to being a major heartthrob - for me, at least, and a few million other women. I've carried a torch for him these last 20 years. This was the first film to demonstrate Cusack's ability to appear sincere and believable, yet also unconventional. It also demonstrated that his voice is able to part a woman's legs in no time.

In the film Cusack plays Lloyd Dobler, a kickboxer who's one of the original slackers in this world. He isn't sure what he wants to do, but he knows he doesn't want to ‘sell  anything, buy anything, or process anything.' After graduation from high school in Seattle, Lloyd asks out Diane (Ione Skye), the class valedictorian and a seriously pretty girl who for some reason never dates that much. That reason could be her overprotective father Jim (John Mahoney, who later earned acclaim as Frasier's dad in the eponymous sitcom, also set in Seattle). Jim doesn't like Lloyd or Lloyd's stated intention to spend as much time with his daughter as possible. Of course, Jim has his own secrets. He's under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service for alleged tax violations at his nursing home. Diane is torn between spending more time with her father and being with Lloyd, of whom her father disapproves.

The most iconic scene in the film is Lloyd standing outside Diane's house with his boom-box blaring Peter Gabriel's ‘In Your Eyes.' Now, who couldn't fall for a guy who can hoist a boom-box above his head, listen to Peter Gabriel, and not get tired? And Cusack did it so convincingly. ‘How come that never happened to me?' was the question a million girls around the world asked themselves. And are still asking themselves 20 years later. Perhaps we should have Cameron Crowe write the script for our lives and hire John Cusack to play our love interest. Of course it couldn't happen now. How stupid would it look for Cusack to raise an iPod over his head? And have a 50-year-old woman pop her head out the window while her 80-something-year-old father opens the front door to try to shoo him away?

‘Say Anything' came out in 1989 and is a film very much of its time (as illustrated by the boom-box scene). Yet 20 years later I will still curl up any Saturday night on the couch to watch it. Maybe I should just get more Cusack films and make a weekend of it. Ah, bliss!