Writer(s): Heckerling
Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, and Paul Rudd
Remember Alicia Silverstone? It’s hard to believe that there was a time that she was Hollywood’s “it” girl, a title that lasted about four short years before she took the inevitable deep slope into nothingness. Being an adolescent male at the time, I pretty much went out of my way to avoid her works—a theory that I would have still maintained had it not been for my wife desperately urging me to watch this, eager to take a trip down memory lane.
Hers was much different: She was six years old when it was released to theaters, but ten or so years old when she finally caught a copy on VHS thanks to her older sister. At that impressionable age, she didn’t just see Alicia Silverstone’s Cher or her flamboyantly over-the-top friends as the caricatures they were meant to be—she legitimately wanted their lifestyle, and spent many hours watching and rewatching the movie, memorizing entire scenes and lines.
Clueless is the simple story of Cher, and her close friend Dionne, two materialistic, rich high school girls who live in Beverly Hills. Dionne is in a long-term relationship with Murray (Donald Faison, one of the film’s biggest highlights), while Cher is with no one. She lives in a mansion with her father (Dan Hedaya, another highlight), and is frequently in the company of Josh (Paul Rudd), a temporary former stepbrother from when their parents were married for a brief time. The movie makes it abundantly clear that they are no longer related, nor are they blood-related, because that would be very creepy if related people were to fall in love, which is exactly what the film has planned for them.
Getting thrown into the mix is Tai (a young, and very much alive, Brittany Murphy), who came from the rougher side of the tracks—her family is not rich, and she is, by Cher’s own admission, “tragically unhip”. Cher takes it upon herself to raise Tai’s property value, elevating her into the upper echelon of high school coolness, simply because she sees it as giving back to her community (?).
Considering this is a high school-related comedy, I could probably spend six pages fully fleshing everything out, like how Tai really wants to get with skateboarding stoner Travis (a perfect Breckin Meyer) but is steered by Cher and her clique toward popular Elton (Jeremy Sisto), who mistakes Cher’s cheerfulness toward him as flirting and attempts to force himself upon her in his car. But I’ll leave most of those subplots for you to discover on your own, because at the end of the day, as it is with most romantic comedies, the film’s only point is finding a love interest for Cher. It’s probably pretty obvious just from reading this; if it’s not, then it will be pretty obvious to you after twenty or so minutes.
Naturally, there’s not much new or original on display here—I’m sure the whole exaggerated “Valley girl” shtick had been done many times before—but there are nevertheless moments when Clueless works well. Like many of the scenes Silverstone is in; I did not realize just how beautiful she is, with her long slender legs often on display in short skirts and dresses. I’m not one to fall for “Hollywood beauty”, but her looks, along with her youthful innocence, makes it one of the few times in any chick flick I’ve seen, where I started to feel about her the way all the other characters did. This was her breakthrough role, and it’s pretty evident why she exploded the way she did, though a string of failures (culminating in the failure of all failures, Batman & Robin) a couple of years later would pretty much do her in.
It also works any time Hedaya, as Cher’s father, is on the screen…his intense persona, paired up with his love and protectiveness towards his daughter, lead to some genuine comedy gems. Ditto that for Donald Faison (as Murray), who plays a stereotypical over-the-top black man. But while his character, like the film, is a recycled idea, Faison plays it perfectly, managing to elicit some unexpected laughs. It’s no surprise that he would go on to play in "Scrubs", alongside Zach Braff, a show that I will admit to enjoying.
In the end, there’s not much here to recommend to anyone outside of their high school years--or anyone looking for a nostalgic peek back into that time frame--but for those other men who are forced to sit down and watch it at the behest of their significant others, rest easy—it’s not as bad as most of them turn out to be. And that, I suppose, is good enough praise.
RECAP: The over-the-top Valley girl lingo is humorous at first, before wearing thin, but Clueless is still a fairly entertaining romp through overly familiar territory. Its strengths lie in its characters, with all of the main cast, lead by Alicia Silverstone, turning in good performances. There are large sections where jokes fall flat, but there are enough laughs to keep the film moving along. I would recommend this more toward the younger crowd, who would probably get a bigger kick out of it than older viewers, but there are certainly much worse things you could do with 90 minutes of your time.
RATING: 6/10
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