Blame It on the Night (1984): Mick Jagger Had One Screenplay Credit. This Is Why.

There are things you need to hold.

There are dreams you need to see.

There are stories you’ve been told.

Some are real, some are make believe…

Those are the opening lyrics to the first song in Blame It on the Night, and they’re so aggressively meaningless they sound like something an AI would generate after being trained exclusively on Hallmark greeting cards and fortune cookies.

They’re also the most honest thing about the movie.

The lyrics reach for profound truths about life, dreams, destiny, and whatever else happened to float through the room that afternoon. They never actually say anything, but they desperately want credit for sounding important.

That’s Blame It on the Night in miniature.

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The funniest part of Blame It on the Night is that it exists at all.

In 1984, Mick Jagger was chatting with producer-director Gene Taft at a cocktail party when he casually pitched an idea about a rock star reconnecting with the son he’d abandoned years earlier.

Taft apparently heard, “This is a movie.”

Most people would have heard, “That’s an interesting conversation.”

Jagger received his one and only screenplay credit for the finished film under the name Michael Phillip Jagger, which feels less like artistic modesty and more like someone quietly trying not to get caught.

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The Nick Mancuso of it All

Nick Mancuso plays Chris Dalton, who is supposedly one of the biggest rock stars in America.

The movie insists upon this despite the fact that his music sounds like REO Speedwagon covering Randy VanWarmer at half speed.

If that sentence made perfect sense to you, congratulations on surviving FM radio in the early ’80s.

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"The only thing they don't teach you in military school is how to be a rock star's son." Actual poster quote for Blame it on the Night.

Chris discovers he has a twelve-year-old son named Job.

Yes… Job.

Because if you’re going to name a kid after a biblical figure famous for endless suffering, you may as well cast him in Blame It on the Night.

The poor kid spends his life in military school until Chris decides the best way to make up for twelve years of absentee parenting is to drag him onto a concert tour.

Apparently Child Protective Services was also on tour.

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About fifteen minutes of the movie consists of concert footage.

Not fifteen minutes spread throughout the film.

Fifteen minutes that feel like the editor accidentally leaned on the “repeat” button.

The audience is supposedly watching different concerts in different cities.

It’s the same stage.

It’s the same crowd.

I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy in the third row pretending to enjoy the songs.

Nick Mancuso as Mick Jagger????

Mancuso gives one of those performances where you start wondering if scenes were filmed months apart and nobody remembered how he played the character last time.

One minute Chris is an overgrown puppy.

The next he’s screaming at everyone within fifty feet.

Then he’s sulking.

Then smiling.

Watching him is like watching someone flip randomly between soap opera channels.

The Ugliest Sweaters This Side of The Cosby Show

Chris's wardrobe needs to be studied by science to uncover just how such fashion atrocities could have been created.

Every sweater looks like it was knitted from leftover carpeting at a Holiday Inn.

If JCPenney had held a clearance sale exclusively for cable television magicians, Chris Dalton would have bought the entire rack.

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Forgotten movies usually disappear because they were unlucky.

Sometimes they’re ahead of their time.

Sometimes they’re misunderstood masterpieces waiting for rediscovery.

Blame It on the Night disappeared because audiences looked at it, shrugged, and collectively decided they had better things to do.

The most entertaining thing about the movie remains the fact that Mick Jagger once thought it was worth mentioning out loud at a cocktail party.

The cocktail party sounds like the better evening.