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Hello Cinephiles,
Today we’re talking about the 1995 film Clueless.
Story
The story is pretty faithful to what I vaguely remember of its inspiration (Emma by Jane Austen) with more slang and 90’s aesthetic than a you can shake a brick-sized cell phone at. It’s cringe and nostalgia all in one, but at its core, it’s sort of sweet.
Score: 0.5
Characters
The characters are mostly nice to each other, which surprised me. I expected mean girls level fighting. So they’re not mean, but they really are clueless. Completely privileged and so very young.
Score: 0.5
Dialogue
There’s a lot of iconic slang in this and lots that I think they invented, but there’s a lot of what was terrible about the 90’s. Diet culture and disordered eating is laced throughout, homophobia, classism, and more than a little racism. Some of which is shown to be bad, but a lot of it is shown as normal.
I did really enjoy how the characters said dumb things smartly and smart things in a valley accent.
Score: 0.5
Visuals and Music
There’s a little weird shaky cam at the start and some strange angles, but overall it’s pretty well shot and each frame has a lot of information it in.
The music is pure nostalgia and I loved it.
Score: 1
Fun
I both enjoyed and cringed at this movie. I think I would have loved it when I was a young teen, but now I see all the problems and roll my eyes at the drama of youth. (Whippersnappers!)
I did like the overall story though, and despite my angst, it was fun.
Score: 0.5
Overall
This is a dated classic that encapsulates everything that was wrong with the 90’s and captures its innocence.
Final Score: 3 Stars out of 5
