Pump Up the Volume

Name: Pump Up the Volume
Genre: Drama, Music

Canada, United States · 1990
Rated R · 1h 45m
Director Allan Moyle
Starring Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Annie Ross, Scott Paulin
Genre Drama, Music

Mark Hunter is an intelligent but shy teenager who has just moved to suburban Arizona from New York. At 10pm each school night, Mark takes to the shortwave radio in his basement and transforms into his secret alter-ego, pirate DJ "Hard Harry". Mark's show, at once thoughtful and profane, becomes an underground hit with students at his high school.

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TV Guide Magazine by

Bad teen film unredeemed by aspirations toward significance.

Chicago Tribune by Gene Siskel

Pump Up the Volume, an exceedingly well-written teenager-full-of-angst melodrama about a high school student who operates a pirate radio broadcast that criticizes parents and teachers while revealing the turmoil of adolescence.

ReelViews by James Berardinelli

Pump Up the Volume, in addition to presenting an engaging story, has tapped into a universal truth about rebels with causes.

Boston Globe by Joan Anderman

It's a celebration of free expression that treats youth like a fierce and beautiful animal, and never attempts to tame it. In Pump Up the Volume, the "why-bother" generation finds a voice, and begins to bother. [22 Aug 1990, p.47]

100

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

A clarion call for freedom and collective action both hopeful and energizing, it qualifies as a generational statement as Rebel Without a Cause did in the 50s, but without the defeatism and masochism. Not to be missed.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

Working within the confines of the teen-age genre film, Pump Up the Volume succeeds in sounding a surprising number of honest, heartfelt notes.