So, apparently, Jon Cryer was huge back in the eighties, because Lions Gate’s really recent The Lost Collection features him into TWO different movies.  You’ve already read about Cryer’s earlier escapades as a Senator’s spunky son in in Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home–now you can catch a whole different side of this surprisingly versatile actor in Hiding Out.

This time, Jon Cryer plays stockbroker Andrew Morenski, who’s inadvertently done some business in a bond deal with the mob, and it’s gone all wrong.  So wrong, in fact, that the Justice Department wants him to testify against the mob.  And that, in turn, means he’s marked for death.  He’s on the run, and winds up in his cousin’s high school.  Apparently, when Jon Cryer shaves his beard and dyes his hair slightly blond and gets a new coat, he’s easily mistaken for a high school junior, or possibly senior.  High school’s surprisingly good for Andrew Morenski–now posing as high schooler Max Hauser–he’s got a hot new girlfriend, he’s handing the history teachers their heads by knowing as much about history as they do (having lived through it) , he’s just been elected class president…it’s better than he could have imagined.  But the mob hasn’t forgotten about Andrew, now Max, and they’ve found him with a vengeance.

It’s shocking to see how well this turned out.  Maybe I just don’t watch this kind of thing that often, but I’m really very impressed by this.  Jon Cryer really does look like a seventeen year old kid when he shaves off his beard.  And maybe I’m feeling overly nostalgic but I remember roller skating rinks that look EXACTLY like the one that was in this movie.  This dates me horribly, but I remember it well.

There’s a lot of little moments that coalesce together to form a whole that proves both comical and surprisingly entertaining.  Jon Cryer virtually seizes the movie to make it largely his own, and everyone else, though thoroughly competent, seems to be just along for the ride as he steals virtually every scene in the movie.  Not that I’m complaining–Cryer is fantastic and making everyone else his supporting actor is hardly a bad idea–it’s just that it’s clear that that’s what they’re doing, and if you came here for anything more than Jon Cryer you’re likely to be disapppointed.

Perhaps the best part about Hiding Out is that they’ll actually pack more jokes and more interesting scenes into the last half hour, making the whole experience a steady ratcheting-up instead of blowing all its good jokes in the first half hour and leaving the rest of the movie to coast on its earliest successes.  They saved the best for last, and this is a surprise.  In fact, the ending is actually quite a surprising chunk of awesome, which is also a comparative rarity for filmmaking, especially in recent years, where no one seems to know how to end a movie anymore and instead just lets it roll to a gradual stop.

So basically, Hiding Out is a surprising sack of joy that will provide plenty of laughs and even a few thrills for extra fun.  You’re going to love this movie–I sure did.