Write a Review
Critic's Review
William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Running 21 minutes, this DVD contains the videos for five of Night Ranger's first six chart singles, including the group's two Top Ten hits, "Sister Christian" and "Sentimental Street." The clips are each little films that, in the typical fashion of music videos, have something to do with the songs that serve as their soundtracks and allow plenty of space for the group members, particularly singer/bassist Jack Blades, to shake their curls and emote in performance. Director Mary Guida, who handled "Sister Christian," "When You Close Your Eyes," and "(You Can Still) Rock in America," seems to have been given the assignment to make these melodic hard rockers into appealing figures for women. Each of the three videos features a young woman prominently, and in the first two, it's the same actress, who portrays a parochial high-school graduate struggling to overcome her inhibitions in "Sister Christian" and a bored housewife in "When You Close Your Eyes." The less closely plotted "(You Can Still) Rock in America" is more concerned with the iconography of American flags and motorcycles, but there is a young woman straining against parental control in there, too. For "Don't Tell Me You Love Me," Night Ranger's first hit, director Dan Halperin has chosen to accompany the driving song with railroad imagery, including having the band perform in a darkened studio bisected by railroad tracks. Jay Dubin's "Sentimental Street" has entirely too much going on, starting with the group in World War II Air Force gear stranded on a beach and including lots of footage shot in Times Square. By this time, the video budgets seem to have been larger than the band's and the director's imaginations.
