Since I did much of my growing up during the ’80s, I have a special soft spot in my heart for John Cusack.

I feel like we grew up together, or, at least like I watched him grow up. He went from Anthony Michael Hall’s nerdy friend in Sixteen Candles to the adorable and endearingly choice Lloyd Dobbler in Say Anything.

And now Lloyd — I mean, John — has left high school and entered the real world. He could be my older brother.

But my affinity for Cusack is not why his newest movie, Grosse Pointe Blank, is cooler than a pink Izod shirt (in my humble opinion). There is plenty in this film to make your heart go pitter-patter — Cusack is just icing on the proverbial cake.

He plays Martin Blank, an independent assassin who is on the brink of his 10-year high school reunion.

He’s dead-set against going (How does he explain his profession to his former classmates?), until his secretary (played well by sister Joan), his shrink (played by Alan Arkin) and a competing assassin (the funny but bizarre Dan Aykroyd) convince him that he should make an appearance.

Blank has, after all, left a few loose ends in Grosse Pointe, Mich. In fact, he stood up his high school girlfriend Debi (the adorable Minnie Driver) on prom night and basically fell off the face of the earth as far as his hometown was concerned.

Showing up after a 10-year absence, especially after just about everybody stuck around town after graduation, is sure to cause quite a stir.

So the plot is super juicy and unique, at least to those of us who grew up on John Hughes films. And Cusack, as usual, brings a real sense of humanity and charisma to his character, who is obviously the type of person anybody could easily misunderstand.

The dialogue, too, is smart and complex, much like that of Cusack’s other masterpieces like Better Off Dead and the aforementioned Say Anything.

Add to that a wonderful cast with great chemistry: Joan, who is so good with her bro that she is basically a staple in any of his films, the hilarious Jeremy Piven, who may be best known for his part on “Ellen,” and Hank Azaria, whose name fans of “The Simpsons” may recognize from the closing credits.

They’re all smart actors, and they play off each other amazingly well.

The soundtrack will also take you down memory lane,unless you don’t remember the ’80s (in which case I feel deep sympathy for you) with offerings from the Violent Femmes, The Clash, The Cure and Guns ‘n’ Roses, the last of which seemed a little strange to me, but who am I to judge?

I half-expected to hear a little Simple Minds or OMD, or to see Molly Ringwald make a cameo someplace, but I suppose that would be asking too much. Needless to say, I did get my ’80s fix for the week.

Overall, Grosse Pointe Blank is worth any effort to see it, even if you prefer guitar rock to synthesizers, or flannel to leg warmers.

But no matter what your decade of choice, it’s nice to see that Lloyd Dobbler grew up to be such a nice, handsome young devil.