Clueless

This movie is another one of those feel good pictures you can't go wrong with. It's light and breezy like cruising the boulevard with the top down and it offers lots of laughs to boot.

Amy Heckerling has brought us another winner with a great supporting cast. A young teenage girl coming of age in of all places, Beverly Hills. The lead character, "Cher" played brilliantly by Alicia Silverstone, is a self centered high school girl in the beginning of the picture who's only interests include clothes, cars and credit cards. As the film progresses, she begins to mature and actually begins to care about other people, not to mention her environment. It's worth renting anytime. Just like "European Vacation" it doesn't matter how many times you see it, it still makes you laugh and that's worth it all.

So if you're reading this in between a bunch of 1 ratings. You're probably wondering just what's going on? Why is it so loved. The movie is basically a reflection of the young Gen X era (more importantly how it's perceived). people also missed the classic 80s teen films and this was a bit of a jump back to that. Most of the 1 reviews are from people born 10 years later who NEED to tell you it's based on Emma (because they're smart and have google). They also have to show they're completely against commercialism in all its forms (and again knew before you that this film is based on a Jane Austin book). They're not watching the film for what it is. It's not trying to be Citizen Cane. Simple movie dealing with being a teen (a very rich teen) in the 1990s. Easy.

Cher (Alicia Silverstone) is a popular ditz at her local high school in Beverly Hills. She's a spoiled, pampered little princess with all the right social connections and endless wealth. However she has yet to find a man in her life - all the Baldwins (as she and her clique of friends call guys they like) have been taken.

When Cher receives a foreign exchange student, she takes her under her wing and decides to try and find her a boyfriend - ironically without having her own yet. Predictability ensues.

I read "Emma" in early high school as I'm sure most kids did, and the movie puts a clever spin on the tale. Alicia Silverstone is surprisingly good in her role, perfectly playing a blond bombshell without a brain but a good heart - only Reese Witherspoon has done such a good job recently at portraying the west coast bimbos. (No offense to the west coast bimbos out there.) The movie's director, Amy Heckerling, has always been rather reliable on the whole and her direction is solid here - she could have turned "Clueless" into a crude, unfunny sex comedy with little wit or brains, but instead she takes a rather dubious idea for a film and transforms it into a well-made, well-acted, funny, inspired, lively, witty satire.

Much better than expected.

"Isn't my house classic? The columns date all the way back to 1972."

When romantic high-school comedy Clueless (1995) was released, it was immediately vaulted into cult-status and firmly stapled as one of the most original teen-flicks of the 1990s. 'Original' is perhaps a term wrongly applied since it is based on the queen of romance Jane Austen's Emma (1815) . But what Clueless did was update the classic story by coating it with high school drama, teenage girls and shopping and sprinkle it with heavy doses of humour.

Emma is no longer Emma; she is Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a spoiled rich girl walking around in her Beverly Hills mansion in a bubble of stereotypes and teen-clichés -- but with a great big heart. So big-hearted, in fact, that she takes on the lost goofy new girl in her school to find her love and popularity, knowing full-well that it could destroy her own reputation. Clueless thus sees Cher and her best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) on a mission to do good. Real good.

All the detours this mission entail are captured brilliantly in the film, taking the form of love-interests, parties, shopping and misunderstandings. From Cher's grumpy lawyer-father (an hilarious Dan Hedaya) and her nerdy step-brother (a likable Paul Rudd) to her eccentric group of friends at school, Clueless is a superb ride of teenage comedy camp. Only just over 10 years old, it is still extremely dated today. But no matter, because the 90s clichés like skateboarding, Marky Mark and the catch-phrase "As if" just make it so much more contemporary and fun to watch.

What elevates Clueless (1995) above generic high school comedy is its use of stereotypes. In most films they are unintentionally there to create a subconscious effect, but in Clueless they are made fun of to a much higher degree -- they are overblown and glorious. It brutally satirizes rich kids and their 'problems' and juxtaposes them with a classic, heart-felt love-story. The kind that only Jane Austen can write.

9/10

Considering how long removed I am from both the '90s and high school, there's something entirely relatable about Clueless - and I'm as surprised as anyone. Alicia Silverstone is beyond charming and there's plenty of humor in the supporting cast as well (in particular, the late Brittany Murphy, incandescent in her own right). But the dialogue really put me back in that high school mindset, and I think the movie strikes a nice balance between satire and teen fluff. Like Mean Girls, this is a movie that I've dismissed over the years for being shallow, and for the life of me I can't explain why. This is good stuff.