Totally agree with the previous reviewer that screenwriter and co producer Gerry Ayres and director Adrian Lyne took a good, simple story of a difficult friendship between two teenage gals and inflated it to the point where the central conflict between Jeannie and Annie is lost amid a clutter of sub plots, added characters that contribute very little, like Madge and Jay, and a need for every messed up teen girl to have an equally messed up (or worse) parent. Consequently, when we come to the tragic denouement the impact, while not lost, is certainly lessened. Indeed, if it were not for the fine acting of Jodie Foster and Cheri Currie there would be little reason to watch the film at all other than some nice shots of LA in the early 80s, courtesy of cinematographers Leon Bijou and Michael Seresin, that make even Van Nuys appear painterly. Give it a C plus. PS...I like Donna Summer as much as the next guy (or gal) but if they played "On The Radio" one more time I was gonna toss my radio through the goddamn tv screen!

Jodie Foster, Cherie Currie (the former lead singer of the seminal all-girl rock group the Runaways in her remarkably able acting debut), Marilyn Kagan, and Kandice Stroh are uniformly believable, splendid and touching as the titular quartet, who are a tight-knit clique of troubled, fiercely loyal adolescent girls with negligent, uncaring, self-absorbed parents who do their best to grow up and fend for themselves in the affluent San Fernando Valley, California suburbs. The girls are forced to make serious decisions about sex, drugs, alcohol, commitment, and so on at a tender young age when they're not fully prepared to completely own up to the potentially harmful consequences of said decisions. Foster, giving one of her most perceptive, affecting and underrated performances to date, is basically the group's den mother who presides over the well-being of both herself and the others; she's especially concerned about the good-hearted, but reckless and self-destructive Currie, whose carelessly hedonistic lifestyle makes her likely to meet an untimely end.

This picture offers a poignant, insightful, often devastatingly credible and thoroughly absorbing examination of broken, dysfunctional families which exist directly underneath suburbia's neatly manicured surface and the tragic net result of such families: tough, resilient, but unhappy and vulnerable kids who have to confront the trials and tribulations of growing up on their own because their parents are either too inconsiderate or even nonexistent. Adrian ("Fatal Attraction," "Jacob's Ladder") Lyne's direction is both sturdy and observant while Gerald Ayres' script is somewhat messy and rambling, but overall still accurate in its frank, gritty, unsentimental depiction of your average latchkey kid's nerve-wrackingly chaotic, capricious and unpredictable everyday life. Leon Bijou's soft, dewy, almost pastoral cinematography properly suggests a delicate and easily breakable sense of tranquility and innocence. Giorgio Moroder arranged the excellent score, which makes particularly effective use of Donna Summer's elegiac "On the Radio." The top-notch cast includes Sally Kellerman as Foster's neurotic, insecure, peevish mother, Scott Baio as a sweet skateboarder dude, Randy Quaid as Kagan's rich older boyfriend, British 60's pop singer Adam Faith as Foster's feckless, absentee rock promoter father, and Lois Smith as Kagan's smothering, overprotective mother. Appearing in brief bits are Robert Romanus (Mike Damone "Fast Times at Richmont High") as one of Foster's morose ex-boyfriends and a gawky, braces-wearing Laura Dern as an obnoxious party crasher. Achingly authentic, engrossing and deeply moving (Currie's grim ultimate fate is very heart-breaking), "Foxes" is quite simply one of the most unsung and under-appreciated teen movies made about early 80's adolescence.

Boy-crazy Deirdre, virgin Madge, Annie Mallick (Cherie Currie), and Jeanie (Jodie Foster) are best friends in the San Fernando Valley. Jeanie has problems with her single mom Mary (Sally Kellerman). Annie keeps running away from her troubled parents and her policeman father wants to institutionalize her. Brad (Scott Baio) is a guy friend. Madge starts dating older Jay Thompson (Randy Quaid).

In very broad strokes, this is Little Women thrown into the L. A. scene. The female friendships are unbreakable. It's very teenage angst, chaotic, and young girls searching for love. It has quite a few interesting young faces. I do wish for it to pick a story and stick with it. It meanders around. In a way, it's a teenage world. With such a scatter-shot plot, it sometimes does hit on something interesting. I also wonder if it needs a female voice with the writing. The girls do give it a good sense of reality. Cherie Currie and Jodie Foster have magnetic presences. It's an interesting early movie about 80's teen culture.