Clueless (1995) Movie Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? Did you have a good weekend? I had a pretty great one. I didn't have D&D but I went to a flea market in Winchester on Saturday with my best friend where I picked up a few comics from the '80s and '90s and a few classic movies on DVD, Blu-ray, and VHS. One of the movies I picked up on DVD was Clueless from 1995, which is what I'm here to review for you today. So let's get into it.

Released on Wednesday, July 19th, 1995, Clueless is one of the most popular movies to come out in the 1990s. It's also a movie that has never been done again. In the '80s, you had movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Revenge of the Nerds, Porky's, The Goonies, and John Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science. Then in the late '90s and early 2000s the pendulum swung back the other way and you ended up with movies like American Pie, Eurotrip, and Road Trip. So to have a movie like Clueless, that isn't a wholesome Disney movie in the mid '90s is almost an anomaly. As writer and director, Amy Heckerling, who directed Fast Times at Ridgemont High in 1982 and National Lampoon's European Vacation in 1985, Clueless is a fantasy. It was never meant to reflect real life. Which is really how the movie feels when you actually sit down to watch it.

A loose adaptation of the 1815 novel, Emma, by Jane Austen, Clueless was originally developed as a TV pilot for 20th Century Fox Television by Amy Heckerling. However, after Heckerling's agent read the script, he suggested that she make it into a feature film. She did but Fox executives passed on it, fearing that boys wouldn't go see it because the film focused on girls. So the movie went into turnaround, which means that the film could be sold to another studio during its development stage. Once producer Scott Rudin got his hands on the script, a bidding war for it began. Heckerling chose Paramount because, not only did they have the highest bid, but they owned MTV and Nickelodeon, and they were hugely successful with the demographic Heckerling wanted Clueless to be aimed at.

The cast of this movie is chalk full of actors and actresses that I'm familiar with. Of course there's Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz, the lead character. While Alicia wasn't in anything major during my teen years, I've seen her in Batman & Robin, where she played Batgirl, and she starred alongside Brendan Fraser in Blast from the Past (1999), which I own on DVD but haven't watched yet. Then there's Paul Rudd. I swear that guy hasn't aged a day since this movie came out 29 years ago. Aside from a bit of gray in his hair, he looks the same now in movies like Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire as he did back then. I'm not as familiar with the rest of the main cast. The only ones I'm pretty familiar with are Breckin Meyer, who appeared in alot of movies in the 2000s like Road Trip, Josie and the Pussycats, and Garfield: The Movie as Jon Arbuckle. I forgot that he'd also been in Herbie Fully Loaded. I haven't seen any of the other movies that Brittany Murphy had been in, but I remember her from the commercials for Just Married and 8 Mile in the early 2000s. Wallace Shawn is probably the actor I know the best given that he's been in so many movies and TV shows that I've seen and really enjoyed like The Princess Bride, the Toy Story franchise, A Goofy Movie, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the Ferengi Grand Nagus, Zek, and as Sheldon's mentor, Dr. John Sturgis on Young Sheldon. And then there's Donald Faison who I know as Turk on Scrubs, as various voices on Robot Chicken, and as Booster Gold in the final season of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

One of the things that impressed me about this movie is how positive it is. Cher (Silverstone), Dionne (Stacey Dash), and Tai (Murphy) aren't at each other's throats, even when Cher and Tai have a bit of a falling out near the end of the movie over Josh (Rudd), it wasn't this big conflict the way you'd see it in movies like She's All That (1999) or Mean Girls (2004). Which is very different for movies set in the '90s, as the late '90s would start to bring about that meanness that was dominant on TV and in movies in the early 2000s. 

One of my favourite scenes in the movie is when Dionne, who is learning to drive, Cher, and Murray, Dionne's boyfriend, played by Donald Faison, are in the car, and they end up on the freeway somehow. The girls are screaming and when the giant truck is behind them Murray starts screaming like he's in a horror movie. It's hilarious because even here in Canada, there are some drivers who avoid the four laned highways (our freeways I guess you'd call them) unless they don't have any other choice.

I also find it interesting that it popularized the Valley speak that was prevalent in the '90s, particularly on shows like Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and the original English dub of Sailor Moon. In fact modern day speech has kept many of those phrases, such as "as if!" and "Whatever!". But the fact that the movie influenced language AND fashion says alot about the movie itself. It's iconic.

The comedy is also pretty hilarious. It's mostly alot of one-liners and quips, but they're hilarious. For example in the gym scene just before Tai is introduced, Amber, who is Cher's rival, played by Elisa Donovan, who played Sabrina's friend, Morgan in seasons 5-7 of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, says to the gym teacher, "Ms. Stoeger, my plastic surgeon doesn't want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose." and Dionne chimes in with, "Well there goes your social life.". There are tons of lines like that which are hilarious, and you really feel the friendship between the characters. Which is also unusual in movies like this at the time. 

The soundtrack for the movie is pretty good. I like the songs, but, with the exception of "Kids in America", which had a cover by the Canadian alternative rock duo, Len, for Digimon: The Movie in 2000, I've never heard any of the songs in this movie before. They're totally perfect for the movie, but, I'd never heard them before. Which is crazy because alot of the time I hear songs from a movie's soundtrack long before I've seen the movie. Like with Flashdance, Dirty Dancing, and The Breakfast Club, among others. Especially when a movie was as successful and popular as Clueless was.

While I've never owned it on VHS, I'm pretty sure I've seen Clueless before I watched it last night. So, on Thursday night, the VHS Club Video Podcast did an episode on this movie, which was cool, as I'd heard of it, and was pretty sure I'd watched it on TV before at some point in the 2000s after I'd gotten my TV/VCR combo set for my 16th birthday in 2002. By sheer luck I found the 2005 "Whatever!" Edition DVD at the flea market that Brad and I went to on Saturday, so I bought it and ended up watching the bonus features on Saturday night, and then I sat down and watched the movie last night for this review. The bonus features are great and go really indepth on the creation and writing of the movie. Unfortunately Alicia Silverstone doesn't appear on any of the bonus features outside of archive footage from when the movie was being filmed in late 1994/early 1995. Which is interesting because she did appear in the bonus features on the 2-disc Special Edition DVD for Batman & Robin, which came out a little bit after this DVD for Clueless had been released. I suspect that she couldn't do these bonus features since they were probably filming them around the time that WB was filming the bonus features for the Batman movie DVDs, including Batman & Robin.

About a year after the movie was released, ABC began airing a TV show based on the movie as part of their TGIF Friday night comedy lineup, with Amy Heckerling producing it. Donald Faison, Stacey Dash, Elisa Donovan, Twink Caplan (she played Ms. Geist in the movie), and Wallace Shawn reprised their roles from the movie, while Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy, and Breckin Meyer were cast in other roles in the show rather than their characters from the movie. Their characters, along with Alicia Silverstone's character, Cher, were recast for the series, with Rachel Blanchard (Are You Afraid of the Dark?, 7th Heaven) replacing Alicia Silverstone as Cher. The show debuted on September 20th, 1996, a week before Sabrina the Teenage Witch debuted. However the ratings weren't great, so the series moved to UPN for two additional seasons, after the end of the first season. I vaguely remember seeing commercials for this show when I was a kid, but I didn't really pay much attention to it.

There was also a series of novels published by Simon & Schuster from 1995 until 1999. The first several books showed the movie versions of the characters on the covers, but by the 11th book came out in 1996, the versions from the TV show began appearing on the covers instead. Unlike the Sabrina novels, also by Simon & Schuster, I don't recall ever seeing the Clueless novels in the Scholastic book orders or at the Scholastic Book Fairs at school. I probably did and I just don't remember, being that that was almost 30 years ago and I don't remember EVERY book that I saw in those book orders or at those book fairs. 

Overall, I had a great time watching this movie. I definitely plan on watching it again. It's not my favourite movie, but it was still so much fun. Again, it was weird watching a positive movie made in the '90s that wasn't a wholesome Disney movie. It's a movie aimed at teenagers, but it didn't feel the need to be raunchy or depressing. Which is something I really appreciate about it. If you've never seen it before I definitely recommend watching it. It's available on Paramount+ in the United States, Canada, and the U.K. for those of you who enjoy streaming movies and TV shows, and it's available on Blu-ray, DVD, and VHS for those of you who prefer watching movies and TV shows on physical media.

That's it for me for today my friends. I'll be back soon with more blog posts throughout the week. Including at least one comic book review, maybe a book review, and my review of season 5 of Star Trek: Discovery as the series finale drops on Thursday. I haven't decided whether I'm just going to review the season or do a full series overview like I did with season 3 of Star Trek: Picard. You'll at least get a review of the fifth season from me on Friday. Until then have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.