‘He does dress better than I do; what would I bring to the relationship?
Amy Heckerling had helped to usher in the era of teen movies with Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982, and then she returned over a decade later to redefine it with Clueless. Released to great fanfare and huge financial success in the summer of 1995, Clueless, a loose remake of Jane Austen’s Emma, captured the zeitgeist with its use of teen vernacular and a buzzy soundtrack. It also introduced the world to Paul Rudd, an epochal moment in modern-day pop culture…
Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is the queen bee of Bronson Alcott High School. After a moment of clarity, she decides to leave her vacuous life behind to devote herself to doing good deeds. This newfound benevolence reaches its apex with the arrival of Tai Fraiser (Brittany Murphy), a new student at school who struggles to fit in and so becomes a project for Cher to cling to. Elsewhere, Josh Lucas, briefly Cher’s father’s stepson and now legal assistant, butts heads with our hapless hero while her father (Dan Hedaya) tries to win a big legal case. The very ’90s supporting cast boasts Breckin Mayer, Donald Faison, and, wonderfully, Wallace Shawn.
Clueless starts as a genuinely funny and well-observed commentary on teen America in the ’90s before evolving into something more heartfelt and prescient in the second half. Endlessly quotable and hugely influential, Clueless set the blueprint for every teen comedy that followed in its wake. Without Clueless, it’s hard to imagine Mean Girls, She’s All That or even the Scream franchise turning out the way they did. The film also made a star of Silverstone, who is excellent here, particularly in the scenes she shares with a never-better Dan Hedaya, and eventually became a cult classic that is now beloved the world over. Sure, the pacing is a little rushed in the third act and the relationship between Rudd and Silverstone perhaps hasn’t aged well, but considering the subject matter, Clueless is probably about as good as it’s possible for a frothy teen comedy to be.
I’d not seen Clueless for a while before embarking on this rewatch but I’m delighted to report that it continues to age like a fine wine. One of the all-time great high school comedies.
