Comedy Pick: Clueless (1995)
When selecting a film for your evening’s comedy viewing, how do you know when you’re in the presence of a genre-bustin’ chuckletastic pioneer…. or one of its shoddy imitators? Oft times, it’s impossible to not keep scrolling when practically each cover is a copy of the one before: a beauteous, sunny cast surrounding the film’s title, spelled in a font more hideous than Comic Sans.
It’s tricky.
Clueless may prescribe to the above marketing techniques, but only because it was one of the first, and best to get the damn thing right. Amy Heckerling’s distinctly more risque (there’s nudity) previous outing, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, served as a precursor to the more mainstream audience Clueless targeted. Both tackle the strife of high school life via the same exacting measures, but it’s Clueless that seized the gap in the market and offered up a revitalized take on teen life.
A loosely-adapted modern update of Jane Austen’s Emma, Heckerling whipped the period dialogue into zappy one-liners spat out by knowing teens. Headed up by Alicia Silverstone’s Cher, one of Hollywood’s most endearingly clueless heroines ever to fight through first world problems, the story follows her affluent high school experience. From the petty feuds with her ex-stepbrother, Josh (a young, witty Paul Rudd), to the quasi-intellectual patter she shares with best friend Di (Stacy Dash), Cher’s stream-of-consciousness voiceovers tie her own inner turmoil to the circumstances of those around her.
What sets it apart from its lesser competition is that it’s a genuinely laugh-out-loud comedy. Surely, all comedies should be, but as is evidenced by “phone-in” comedies churned out by the bucketful by Adam Sandler – they’re often full of racist, misogynistic gags that fall flat. And it’s Heckerling’s script, which shares the one-liners evenly throughout the cast of characters, that’s responsible. Di and her boyfriend Murray’s shouting match during an unexpected trip onto the freeway, classmate Amber’s incredulous responses to Cher’s classroom debates, new girl Tai’s accent…
Nevertheless, it’s Silverstone’s show. She’s never since put in quite such a compelling turn. The sheer silliness with which she justifies her sort-of self-centred agenda is source of the film’s success, most of which crops up during altercations with her father, played with deadpan brilliance by Dan Hedaya. Some of the flick’s sharpest retorts are his, nabbing the best snipe when high-falutin’ Christian sashays into the house to collect Cher for a date, brimming with arrogance; “What’s with you, kid? You think the death of Sammy Davis left an opening in the Rat Pack?
Twenty years old next year, Clueless has attained the classic status Cher would probably deem “way existential.”