Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) 92m.
In NEVER BEEN KISSED, Drew Barrymore played a writer posing as a student in high school to research a story. In real life, 22-year old Cameron Crowe (later a writer-director himself) spent a year ‘undercover' in a San Diego high school doing the same thing. The resulting book and film, FAST TIMES, could easily have been written without recourse to such methods (maybe Cameron was just feeling nostalgic) but it's still one of the best of an undernourished genre. Besides Crowe, you also have director Amy Heckerling and the quality cast to thank, several of whom went on to establish durable screen careers (You don't usually find an ensemble like Sean Penn, Phoebe Cates, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judge Rheinhold in most teen campus flicks).
Ostensibly a comedy, FAST TIMES grounds itself in reality and avoids the hi-jinks route that cripples many of its not-so-smart imitators. If it is the intention of Crowe's script to hold a mirror up to contemporary high school students and show us their lives, then the absence of a contrived storyline is a good decision. It's the lack of plot that makes this film repeatable viewing – if anything, FAST TIME improves a second time around because its fluctuating tone doesn't subvert your expectations. The diverse characters wend their way through a collage of set pieces, retaining credibility without coming across as stereotypes. Even the film's most overt character, Sean Penn's spaced-out surfer dude Jeff Spicoli, seems naturally drawn (he pretty much established the archetype with this performance). His dialogues with the dogmatic History teacher Mr Hand (Ray Walston) are the film's most enjoyable moments, leaving Jennifer Jason Leigh's character to carry the burden of FAST TIMES' downbeat side. We watch Leigh go through one miserable sexual/romantic encounter after another, but at least her advice from the more experienced Cates is juxtaposed with Brian Backer's coaching from Robert Romanus to some humorous effect (after being told to use Led Zeppelin for make-out music, Backer plays the ominous, booming Zep track ‘Kashmir' on his car stereo). Surprisingly, the frequent discussions about sex are more blunt and crude when coming from the girls. That doesn't mean these scenes are used for cheap laughs: FAST TIMES works well because we have the sense that, like Crowe, we are listening in.
FAST TIMES seemed worthy of attention in the early 80s because it hit the screen at about the time it looked like there was going to be a new wave of female directors (i.e. Susan Seidelman, Penelope Spheeris, and Martha Coolidge). This didn't really happen, but the film seems to have made an impression on many viewers (although the main memory of anyone I've ever spoken to seems to be of Cates shedding her bikini top). Nowadays the film's popularity is assured by fans who saw the film in cinemas when they were in high school themselves and have since claimed it as their 80s photograph album. Even a moment as simple as Judge Rheinhold bopping to the radio while washing his car seems to be a perfectly-captured snapshot. The great soundtrack is a bonus – though curiously the music itself doesn't date the film as much as its references to the likes of Pat Benatar and Cheap Trick.
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