Rating: 
Summary: Stab them with your plastic forks
Review: One of my favorite movies, Pump Up the Volume is a film that has a great message and a cool cast. Christian Slater is perfect as Harry/Mark, I think this is his best role, his second best being JD in Heathers. Samantha Mathis is also great in her role has Nora. It's a movie that has a message about censorship, teen suicide, pressures in society, freedom of expression and it also has a great soundtrack with lots of music Hard Harry plays on his pirate radio station. It's a movie that, even with it's slightly serious tone, makes you feel free and gives you a lift. I really think everyone should see this movie, it's one of my top 5. It also has tons of great quotes, especially things Harry says during his radio broadcasts.
Rating:
Summary: Slater gives a flawless performance and his best ever
Review: this movie is about Christian Slater (Heathers, True Romance) who plays Hard Harry the pirate radio man of his pirated show. this is a movie that deals with rebellion and teen angst..kids who want to live their lives free of all the things they are imprisoned to do and they tune into Slater's show everynight to listen to him speak it loud and proud. Samantha Mathis' (Broken Arrow, That Thing Called Love) film debut...this is number 1 out of the 3 movies her and Slater star together in. Cheryl Pollack (My Best Friend Is A Vampire) is hotter then ever. Slater's flawless performance and unforgettable moments make this one a masterpiece and a movie not to be forgotten, one of the best movies of 1990. Also starring Mimi Kennedy (Tv's Dharma and Greg), Scott Paulin, Andy Romano, Ellen Greene (Talk Radio) and Billy Morrisey (Severed Ties) co-star. note: Seth Green (Tv's Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Party Monster) has a short but recognizable role in here and so does Martin Landau's daughter Juliet Landau (Tv's Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Ed Wood).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Movie - Brilliant Actors.
Review: Excellent Movie - Brilliant Actors. The only defect of this film is that there is no DVD version other than the US one.
This is the best movie I had ever seen on Teenager life.
Rating: 
Summary: Smarter Than The Average Teen Film
Review: What happens when a city kid gets dumped into suburbia, with no friends, and only a ham radio to keep him company? He finds a band to broadcast on, rents a post box for listeners to send him letters, creates an air name, and rags on everyone in his high school.
With a soundtrack that prominently features artists like Leonard Cohen, The Beastie Boys, Was (Not Was) and Ice T among others, the music certainly is eclectic.
The story is held together with a tour-de-force performance from Christian Slater as the jaded jock, turned reform crusader, exposing the shortcomings of his school behind his anonymous veneer of Hard Harry.
It's a bit talky and a bit too clever at times, but it's earnest in its feelings about free speech and concerns about corruption in leadership, a message that seems even more timely today than it did when the film first appeared in theaters.
If you like this movie, you should also check out an earlier film by Director/Writer Allan Moyle: "Times Square."
They're both worth a look.
Rating:
Summary: So be it...
Review: Mark Hunter: incredibly timid and quiet. A kid who, while at school, can not talk if his life depended on it.
Hard Harry: not afraid to say what he thinks and how he feels. A true polar opposite to Mark Hunter, even though they are one and the same.
Mark, the new kid from back East, is the quiet bookworm type at Hubert Humphrey High who has a Howard Stern style radio personality at home. With the help of a short wave radio, he takes on the world with how his generation feels. Not realizing the impact that he has on people and the growing number of fans, he faces sex, love, suicide, social pressure, music, and many other important issues to your (not-so) normal high school students.
While the movie is good, the dvd is quite lacking. The sound is in 5.1 Dobly Digital Surround which is fine for a movie like this. Widescreen and Fullscreen video are both available, but I think Fullscreen could have been removed for more extras. As it stands there is a standard filmography of the cast and crew, and a Theatrical Trailer. That is all. There aren't even any commentary tracks.
I would still recommend this to everyone, extras or not. While the music and style may be dated, the ideals and feelings are not.
Rating:
Summary: Stab them with your plastic forks
Review: One of my favorite movies, Pump Up the Volume is a film that has a great message and a cool cast. Christian Slater is perfect as Harry/Mark, I think this is his best role, his second best being JD in Heathers. Samantha Mathis is also great in her role has Nora. It's a movie that has a message about censorship, teen suicide, pressures in society, freedom of expression and it also has a great soundtrack with lots of music Hard Harry plays on his pirate radio station. It's a movie that, even with it's slightly serious tone, makes you feel free and gives you a lift. I really think everyone should see this movie, it's one of my top 5. It also has tons of great quotes, especially things Harry says during his radio broadcasts.
Rating: 
Summary: shallow teen flick weighed down by self-awareness
Review: Christian Slater is Mark Hunter, a nerdy Eastern transplant to an Arizona school. Completely overlooked by his easy-going parents and everybody else, Hunter runs a pirate radio station under the name "Hard Harry". Every night, the hordes of students who think nothing of Hunter, listen for every syllable of Harry's voice. Hunter laces his subversive radio with mixtures of Lenny Bruce and the likes of "Concrete Blond", and everybody loves it. Everybody that is but the stern, authoritarian and uptight nerds who live for nothing but make life miserable for everybody younger than they are. Hunter is a man with ideas, but he can only express them through Harry - he alters his voice for radio, and uses an anonymous mail box to collect fan mail - keeping his double life a secret. Unfortunately, Nora (Samantha Mathis), an introverted intellectual teen who works the library at Hunter's school, pieces together the clues of Hunter's & Harry's shared ID. Until then, "Pump" is sheer fun, an equal opportunity offender that doesn't strain your sense of morality. The adults are easy targets (even Hunter's parents are out to lunch - they never realize that their son's got enough electronic equipment to be the "Hard Harry" that everybody is talking about; the rest of the adults fail to consider Harry's message as a wake-up call). But the teens are also pretty wasted - for all of their energy, they never convert their power into a cause (the script wakes up near the end, and crafts a genuine cause involving manipulation of student scores - a revelation hit on by a "friendly" teacher played by Ellen Greene of "Little Shop of Horrors" fame). Instead of rising up against some perceived evil, Hunter's fellow teens merely become louder versions of the same annoying and cliquish high schoolers that we've seen in countless flicks (typically starring Corey's Feldman & Haim, and Larry Linville or Mary Woronov as the evil principal). Even after essentially telling his listeners what kind of person he really is, none seek him out. They're not after Hunter's reality, only Harry's wicked construction. It's good clean fun, and Harry's rants are so irresistible, you'd be willing to sit through about 2 hours of it. Though Hunter/Harry talks to the disaffection of Teen-America, little in the surrounding setting bears out how much trouble we're in (clue: though a bastion of adult-managed conformity, Hunter's school still keeps the library stocked with Lenny Bruce). Unfortunately, in true shock-jock tradition, Harry/Hunter's words become entangled with tragedy when a local teen commits suicide shortly after calling in. Faster than you can say "Good Morning Vietnam", Hunter dumps than resurrects Harry's persona - only now he's on a mission, and "Pump" becomes more serious than it proves to deserve. Still missing the genuine story underneath the story, the teens become louder, and the adults more repressive (one of the teens is brutally assaulted by one of the school's employees) and the script more satisfied with how it delivers Harry's message than how it can convincingly craft one. At that point, "Pump" transforms from an engaging comedy into a weighed-down message movie, one that spoils the fun of both halves. By the end, you feel like you've been watching less of a movie, than a really long and loud "After School Special".
Rating:
Summary: Unique, comical, touching, beautiful chaos.
Review: Watch this movie, a fearless look at highschool, sterotypes, suicide, and the afterlife. Hard Harry has something for everyone, and so does this movie. This is one movie you wont stop thinking about, even after the credits have ended.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie
Review: Finally, somebody has the intelligence and the guts to come out and ask, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?!?" Nobody is required to fall into the rut and coast along in life, living up to the expectations and stereotypes and ideals of their age group.
Students at Hubert Humphrey High are screaming inside. Many of them don't know what to do with their lives, so they do the best they can pretending to be the perfect, destined-for-success angels that their prim-but-pushy parents expect them to be. The fact that the principal of the school values her school's SAT scores rather than the students' personal welfare doesn't help much.
Enter Happy Harry Hardon. Feeling lonely, depressed, and frustrated with life, he starts a pirate radio station and spills his guts out. Not only does he develop a following, he gives powerful advice that everyone should live by, and in the process exposes corruption in the school.
His words are powerful. Maybe you'll blow this one off and say it's unrealistic (hello people... what movie is), or maybe you'll feel liberated and completely change your outlook on life, like I did. "Doesn't this blend of blindness and blandness make you want to do something crazy?? Then DO SOMETHING CRAZY!!"
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