Clueless

Title: Clueless
Director: Amy Heckerling
Released: 1995
Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Dan Hedaya, Elisa Donovan, Justin Walker, Twink Caplan, Julie Brown, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, Jeremy Sisto, Nicole Bilderback, Sean Holland

Plot: Cher (Silverstone) a privileged high school student in Beverly Hills sets out to find a deeper purpose first as a matchmaker and by taking new girl Tai (Murphy) under her wing all while dealing with the ups and downs of teenage life.

Review: While Amy Heckerling might not have the name value of the likes of Fincher or Spielberg she has since her directorial debut Fast Times at Ridgemont High has been behind cult comedies like National Lampoon’s European Vacation and the Looks Who’s Talking trilogy wisely opting out directing the third were she returned solely as the films producer. She has also if perhaps unintentionally given us a trilogy of high school comedies for which Clueless is the second film sandwiched between the crass 80’s comedic sensibilities of Ridgemont Hight and the forgettable 00’s offering Loser staring a post American Pie Jason Briggs and Mena Suvari and which lets not forget also gave the world Wheetus’ Teenage Dirtbag.

Initially introduced as a queen bee airhead Cher is certainly an interesting choice of heroine for the film especially as she’s the kind of girl we have come to expect to being the bitch tormenting the outsider we are rooting for. Cher though is just tip of the vacuous iceberg which is her privileged high school were the students are more concerned about their social standing than their grades. However after matchmaking two of her teachers in a bid to improve her grades she finds a new outlet for her popularity which she is soon channelling into helping the clueless unhip new girl Tai while dealing with the usual ups and downs of high school.

One of several modern reworkings of popular classics which included the likes of Cruel Intentions and 10 Things I Hate About You amongst its ilk with Heckerling here reworking Jane Austin’s Emma to great effect while at the same time not restricting herself to the confines of making an updated adaptation. Instead Heckerling clearly is having fun thumbing her nose at the absurdity of the privileged and cliques as students are seen baring the marks of the latest plastic surgery while teachers attempt to provide some kind of education to these trust fund babies who are hardly going to struggle once they get into the real world.

Not content to just focus on Cher here Heckerling brings together a colourful cast of characters and despite introducing the various cliques chooses to focus only on Cher’s clique of popular kids which includes the sassy Stacey Dash and the much missed Britney Murpy and while it does help further highlight her personal changes as a person does feel like a slightly wasted opportunity to not have her have more interaction with these groups who instead are often pushed into the background for colour. We do however get fun interactions with her gruff to loving litigator father (Hedaya) aswell as her polar opposite step-brother Josh played by Paul Rudd in second role after Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Meyers who seeing how he hasn’t seemingly aged since the films release is clearly part of the same cloning program which gave us Adam Scott.

Unquestionably one of the strongest points of the film though is that here we get kids talking like kids and not like mini adults thanks largely to Heckerling studying how high school students talked to each other rather than making it up and surprisingly for a film so definativly 90’s in its style the film has really aged well and instead feels almost like a snapshot of the 90’s than many of it’s dated 80’s contempories from John Hughes and co. This film however is a fun ride throughout wether following Cher’s attempts to become a more forfilled person or her misguided attempts to find the right guy it’s continuiously entertaining as Silverstone plays the character constantly against type and creating one of the more unlikely heroines of the 90’s, whose further adventures would be continued through the equally fun tv show which saw most of the cast returning while Silverstone and Rudd went onto other projects. However even as a one shot character it’s a forfilling journey.