CLUELESS
A film review by James Meek
Copyright 1995 James Meek
Paramount Pictures Written and directed by: Amy Heckerling Cinematography by: Bill Pope Starring: Alicia Silverstone, Paul Rudd, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Dan Hedaya Rated PG-13
If you're going to cannibalize, cannibalize the classics.
CLUELESS, Amy Heckerling's latest cinematic postcard from the sunny lands of adolescence, borrows the skeletons of plot and character from Jane Austen's classic novel EMMA. While the sympathetic irony of the story remains the same, however, Heckerling utilizes movies' kinetic energy, rather than novels' layered detail, in her portrayal of the rituals of society's upper crust. Heckerling made a savvy choice. CLUELESS is her best movie since FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, almost making up for three LOOK WHO'S TALKING movies.
In CLUELESS, Heckerling eschews the verisimilitude of EMMA, or even of FAST TIMES. Her characters inhabit the same pop-culture high school world as those in HEATHERS. Where HEATHERS mocked the black-hearted, back-stabbing, Mr. Hyde faces of adolescence, however, CLUELESS focuses on the Dr. Jeckyll half of teenage life. The kids in CLUELESS form cliques, but their edges blur. Most people turn out to have more depth than they reveal on first consideration. There's a gratifying casualness about things like homosexuality and ethnicity; characters are ultimately accepted for the things they do rather than what they happen to be.
Alicia Silverstone stars as Cher, and I feel obligated to extend an apology to her: I was convinced that she couldn't carry a ninety minute comedy to save her soul. Sexy poses depend on the talent of the artist behind the camera; comic, sexy performances require a capable actress in front of the camera with whom a director can work. Silverstone may have been able to set adolescent male hormones ablaze with her blonde vixen performances in Aerosmith videos, but I really didn't think she could do more than pout pretty and smirk on cue.
When we first meet Cher, she's high school royalty, a wealthy, beautiful young woman with social advantages by the fistful. She and her friend Dionne manage to romantically pair off two of their teachers, thereby improving their own grades by improving the teachers' moods. Inspired by these good deeds, Cher decides to use her popularity to help a new girl become one of the school's elite, attempting to arrange an advantageous match with one of the available popular males. This quest, and her own quest to find a suitable boyfriend, prove more difficult, and Cher slowly learns to empathize with others--both locally and globally, as the motto goes.
Silverstone makes a potentially vacuous character charming, smart, and sexy, delivering a performance that stands (in fashionable satin shoes) on the shoulders--and in the shadow--of comic giants like Judy Holliday and Carole Lombard. Silverstone's real talent lies in the physicality of her performance. She's comfortable both performing slapstick and looking sexy, combining the two smoothly when the scene demands. She works her lips around her dialogue with glee, adding comic fillips to her delivery and raising the certainty that, when she does kiss someone, it's going to be some kiss. It is.
The best part of CLUELESS, however, is the dialogue around which Silverstone stretches her lips. Heckerling wisely avoids attempting to document cutting-edge teen slang, which would have been unavoidably out of date by the time the movie was released. Instead, she concocts a convincing argot containing elements of hip-hop, advertising jargon, colorful turns of phrase, gleanings from the dictionary and thesaurus, and other fragments of pop vernacular. The language works because it's taken for granted, rather than used as a punchline. When Cher refers to Josh, her ex-stepbrother hanging around her father's house, as a "Kato," it's slipped into the middle of a sentence, not drawing any particular attention to itself.
It's a joy to just listen to the characters speak; they use language as a playground, and an opportunity to demonstrate creativity and intelligence. Specific terms occasionally get explained--a "Monet" is someone who, "like the paintings," looks good from far away, but is a mess from up close; "jeepin'" is having sex in a car--but the cumulative effect is a delirious delight. Characters aren't necessarily saying much of anything, but they're well spoken. When Josh asks Cher if she knows what she's talking about after she refers to "Ren and Stimpy" as "way existential," she replies, "No--do I sound like I do?"
CLUELESS is smarter by half than most "teen comedies," lighter on its feet and much less self-important than, say, the teen oeuvre of John Hughes. Heckerling found the right ingredients to throw in a blender, frappe, and serve as a refreshing summer confection. It's gaudy and pink, but there are real strawberries and cranberry juice in there to add a little nutritional value.
Grade: B+
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