CLUELESS
A film review by Anthony E. Wright
Copyright 1995 Anthony E. Wright
This ain't Shakespeare, but CLUELESS has several audiences in mind. Teenagers and those who still identify with them should enjoy and perhaps even identify with some of the characters. Outsiders to teenage and/or California culture will feel "as if" they are on an anthropological exploration. Jane Austen fans will enjoy the clever update of their favorite author's novel EMMA. CLUELESS is a silly, fun movie. Yet those looking for social satire should stick to the book.
Alicia Silverstone, 18, known primarily for Aerosmith videos, plays the lead role, Cher Horowitz, with glee and a glint of mischief. She's a Beverly Hills high school babe, rich and popular, good yet shallow. There's none of the awkwardness that defines teenage life, only supreme confidence. Yet the characterizations of cliques, petty disputes, and obsessions ring true, and will resonate with anybody who is still (god help them) in the throws of adolescence. (Cher amusingly praises how considerate her best friend Dionne and her boyfriend are to each other--"when nobody is looking.") This movie also has the one necessity for a teen-cult film: Great lines.
In fact, this might qualify as one long "Saturday Night Live" sketch (a good one, though), with the reliance on such caricature-making lines, from "As if!" to the desire to be a "Betty" or a "Baldwin." However, while this give-and-take has some wonderful moments, the real power of this film is the cumulative effect. Those who might mock Valley-Speak with an occasional "Omigawd!" should beware that *the entire movie* is spoken in such parlance. Writing the dialogue for this movie was probably as hard for the Bronx-raised Amy Heckerling as speaking in Klingon ... yet by the end I believe in it as a form of communication. Even the most cyncial adults should enjoy this celebration(?) of California teenage culture. The directing is savvy, from a hysterical L.A. freeway scene, which lets us experience firsthand how a learner's permit driver reacts to a tractor-trailer behind her, to the idea of a phone being transformed into the 2001 obelisk, complete with """""Thus Spracht Zarathrustha.
Critics looking to pan a teenage film normally rely on the "Where's the plot?" crutch. That's usually a good call, but here, the writers have Jane Austen as a defense. The movie takes virtually every plot device from EMMA, to the point of even calling one character, Elton, by the same name. Austen fans will enjoy how clever this adaptation is done: paintings become photographs, balls become raves, live-in family friends become ex-stepbrothers, and fireplaces become, well, electric fireplaces.
Perhaps the social satire that this films offers is that perhaps, as Jane Austen chronicles, we as a culture were always this ditzy, this shallow, this clueless. This is all the social commentary there is, except for the obligatory making fun of the extremes of Beverly Hills high school's inhabitants, with their constant nosejobs and cellular phones to talk to each other in the hall. This film could have had the potential to contain strong Heathers-like satire, but it stayed at a satisfying uber-Beverly Hills 90210 level. No message, but a fun and goofy summer movie.
-- Anthony E. Wright aewright@cme.org
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