Director: Amy Heckerling
Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd
Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I have a very strong memory of watching it for the first time on HBO. I’m allowing for the possibility as I spent the 90s growing up with a younger sister that I *may* have watched all of it in bits and pieces as it wound its way through a VCR in multiple viewings over the year. It’s only fair, I’m sure my sister saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) in much the same way.
Did I Like It: I recently wrote in my review of Natural Born Killers (1994) that it may not be fair to judge satire by the effectiveness with which it annihilated its target through wit. It’s even less fair here, as the wealthy continued to grow vapider as we’ve leapt into the twenty-first century. Indeed, many probably viewed the Cher Horowitz of this film’s first and second act as the hero of their times and ignored any of the changes she went through at the end of the movie.
But this movie strikes me as way funnier, or at the very least more deliberate in its attempts at humor. The jokes land with mor accuracy when the movie is not trying to buzz its way past my perception.
It’s also worth marveling at the fact that this one of the few teen comedies that does not feel the need to predicate its third act on some kind of dance or prom. I’ve been racking my brain for other examples as I type this, and all I can come up with is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and The Breakfast Club (1985) and the specific settings and timeframe of both of those films are the only thing protecting them from defaulting to the trope. Clueless gets bonus points for not tracking in the same tired old beats.