Women's Pictures - Amy Heckerling's Clueless
Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 1:00PM 
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teen movie made after 1995 owes a debt to Clueless. Since its release 20 years ago, Amy Heckerling's classic has had surprising longevity: it revitalized teen fashion in the wake of grunge, resuscitated a genre (while also spawning a new subgenre), spawned a platinum soundtrack, launched a new generation of acting careers, like way altered the teenage lexicon, and inspired a rap video as late as 2014. We at Team Experience reference it at least once a year. And though Clueless landed at #3 on our recent Back To School Team Top 10, the two films that topped it were both direct beneficiaries of Clueless's wit and satire. Clueless redefined the teen film genre, divorcing it from the darkness of the 80s, while maintaining the social satire and serious observation that gave the totally quotable dialog resonance for an optimistic, clueless new generation of 90s teens.
When Amy Heckerling was refining her Austen-inspired idea at Paramount, the genre she had helped create a decade previous with Fast Times At Ridgemont High was faltering. [More...]
John Hughes had moved to family comedies, the Brat Pack had disbanded, and other than some outliers like Linklater's Dazed and Confused, the teen film looked like a faded fad. Heckerling moved forward by looking back.
Remembering her own love of Emma as a student, Amy Heckerling effectively transplanted Jane Austen's satirical love story from the vain, silly parlors of 19th century English society to the equally vain, silly halls of 20th century American high school. Austen's headstrong heroine Emma became Heckerling's smart-but-superficial Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a rich "Valley Girl" (actually from Beverly Hills) who benevolently rules as the most popular girl at her high school. Surrounding Cher are a host of archetypical characters, including stoners, outsiders, lovelorn teachers, overly protective parents, and cliquish competition, played by another cast of soon-to-be stars of various wattage: Brittany Murphy, Stacey Dash, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, and Paul Rudd. The story is all Cher's though, as she tries to rehabilitate a new girl (Murphy) and in the process learns that her own identity is less secure than she'd thought.
The genius of Heckerling's direction and screenplay is in Clueless's deceptively light tone. While Fast Times At Ridgemont High had tackled dark subjects like abortion, on the surface Clueless looks pretty light. However, as we previously saw, Amy Heckerling takes comedy very seriously. Through Cher's interactions with her fellow student, especially protege-turned-popular girl Tai, Heckerling exposes the uncomfortable truth of teenagers: teens are terribly self-conscious and not even a little self-aware. Cher may dress via computer program, keep her head when a man mugs her, and blow off parking tickets, but a well-placed insult from a former friend and being knocked a few rungs down the social ladder shake Cher to her core. Heckerling doesn't judge Cher for her skewed priorities, instead Heckerling gently pokes fun while keeping as earnest as Cher is about finding herself. It's this balance of sincerity, satire, and silliness that subsequent films would try (and mostly fail) to copy.
The story of Clueless is one of reinvention, not only within the film, but also in its influence as well. Not only did Amy Heckerling revitalize the teen film genre, she also started a subgenre of teen film literary adaptations, which would result in some wonderful movies (10 Things I Hate About You) and some terrible ones (Get Over It). Much to the chagrin of English teachers everywhere, Clueless inspired a generation of kids to drop "like" into their sentences at, like, every pause. On the anniversary of a film, it's easy to overstate its importance. However, considering the hundreds of films, thousands of books, and hundreds of thousands of words Amy Heckerling's little teen comedy has inspired, it's easy to tell: we are still totally butt crazy in love with Clueless.
Wrapping up this month on Women's Pictures...
9/24 Vamps (2012) (Amazon Instant Video) - Amy Heckerling's literal suckfest, which weirdly gives us hope for the future.
Reader Comments (16)
A four star teen movie. And there are not many of those.
One of my top five all-time. Downright magical. I love this writeup
Whatever happened to Alicia,has no one from the Wiig/McCarthy team thought of using her obvious comic gifts.
I discovered Clueless far too late for it to have a direct effect on me. But I would rank it up there not only as a top teen movie but perhaps one of the top comedies of the 90's (our last innocent decade).
Alicia should have been in the Ghostbusters reboot! :)
The great thing about Clueless is that it delighted Jane Austen fans, and teenagers who had never read her.
Count me in to those who think both star and director deserve a chance to work with Paul Feig or Elizabeth Banks.
When I was a kid, I had Clueless on VCR and I used to come home from school and watch it like everyday. Used to drive my mum crazy. Never gets old though, even if I can quote it line by line.
I highly recommend the book "As If! An Oral History of Clueless" that came out a few months ago. It touches on every aspect of the film, including the Jane Austen-Emma stuff which was completely lost on me as a 9-year-old boy. (You see, the part when they leave the Val party and Cher tries to manufacture who gets dropped off by whom? in the BOOK, Emma does that with CHARIOTS!)
Also, Gwyneth Paltrow did an interview where she scoffed "Ugh, I hate that today's generation is first going to know about Jane Austen from Clueless", and she can TAKE A SEAT.
I love this series. I'm so glad it's not sporadic.
@jakey — that was 90s Gwyn, when she still considered herself an actress. Now she would do a Clueless blog post to sell something!
MARK: Batman & Robin and the worst Batgirl origin EVER happened to her, basically destroying any hope of her or Chris O'Donnell having serious careers.
Ranking of the ones I've seen or read:
6. Batman & Robin (Yeah, there was no way that this should have been done. Doing something that's nakedly trying to draw comparisons to Barbara Gordon's story when your franchise isn't even interested in Commissioner Gordon is the kind of thing that leads to this insanity.)
5. Batman: Arkham Knight's "Masquerade" City Story (It shows her as a genuinely awesome hacker (bleep that dumb multiple attempts to guess the password scene), but it still heavily runs counter to the entire lesson of the Barbara Gordon idea that people so like.)
4. Batgirl #0 (New 52). (She takes down a lame bald guy to save her brother, the future serial killer and has no clear intentional pursuit of superheroism in the story. Yipee, that was totally worth superseding Chuck Dixon's Batgirl: Year One. Said no one ever. I mean, still better than the Batman & Robin or Arkham Knight explanations, but still pretty darn bad.)
3. Batman: TAS (Understand that these bottom three are all kind of bad. This one occupies the definitive middle slot for her at least not seeming reactive like the New 52 version or pushed into the game by Batman like Batman & Robin or Arkham Knight, but her impetus here is still kind of stupid.)
2. The Batman (Is this show as good, overall, as TAS? No. But does it have a better rendering of the Barbara Gordon origin? Yep. That two-parter still has problems (underage Poison Ivy = what were you guys thinking?), but they have nothing to do with the idea of the Barbara Gordon story arc here, which IS stronger than the TAS idea.)
1. Batgirl: Year One (This, and it's brother story, Robin: Year One, are pretty much Chuck Dixon's masterworks and he's pretty much the BEST writer of the kid sidekicks in that phase of their career DC has EVER had and it's a shame they lost him.)
I just (re)watched this last night. It really does hold up, and Alicia Silverstone is a star.
It is still SO GOOD. Watch it in a double feature with Martha Coolidge's VALLEY GIRL for a 5-star woman-directed teen night.
You've perfectly captured just what it is about Clueless that makes it so magical. Making a film like this look so effortless is NOT easy, but serendipity smiled upon it! It's a stone-cold classic.
If ONLY everywhere in L A took 20 minutes! As if!
Kieran & forever1267 - Your references are the bomb!
LadyEdith & David - Was there buzz about Heckerling or Silverstone getting involved in the GHOSTBUSTERS reboot? I'd love to see that, too!