1988 teen dramaRating: 12/20
- Plot: Veronica oozes her way into a clique of the titular Heathers, the in-crowd at her high school. A new boy with a trench coat catchers her eye and is more interested in killing everybody.
- This might be the most realistic portrayal of high school ever. This also gets bonus points for the line "I don't patronize bunny rabbits" and for having the first on-screen fist bump. And for having Winona Ryder. I have mixed feelings about this one because I liked it when it came out but now think it's about the stupidest thing I've ever seen. When a line about "coughing up a phlegm globber" sounds Shakespearean compared to the rest of the script, you know things are bad. I'm really not sure how anybody could have read this script and wanted to be in the movie. Still, this has a redeeming quirkiness and enough darkly comic bits to make it worth the time. And I could be completely wrong about the dialogue. It's entirely possible that it's a work of genius. Regardless, Christian Slater's Jack Nicholson impression gets on my nerves. Or who knows? Maybe that's a work of genius, too. The satire in this is pessimistic and biting, not always in the best of ways, and the narrative, though not believable in the slightest, at least doesn't make you feel cheated. Things do really fall completely apart by the end though.
This might sound dark, but Christian Slater would have been better off overdosing after completing this movie. He would have been a legend.
Its a movie that has certainly not aged well, but it has had an impact on the culture much greater than a little movie like it should have.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all Winona is freaking hot in this. You see the actor she SHOULD have been, funny, sexy, interesting, and with those hidden depths that made directors and teenage boys everywhere fall in love with her. Of course she then takes all these things and makes dark period pieces like Little Women, The Crucible and The Age of Innocence. What a wasted of the hottest woman of the 1980's AND 1990's, to stick her in forty layers of clothes. But I digress. Imagine that.
As for THIS movie...its the purest catering to a demographic movie ever made. You want teenage angst WE GOT YOUR TEENAGE ANGST. The director of this film should be brought up on charges for allowing Christian Slater to run amok in this. What the hell was he thinking letting a two hour mediocre Jack Nicholson impression go on as "acting". The chemistry that Slater and Ryder has is apparent, and if they could have gotten Slater to tone it down a little, it would have made it far more compelling.
Of course the movie is not about being compelling...its broad, hit you over your head with a bat satire. Its too much, even with the occasional funny line thrown in. Thats the major issue with this film, its a movie populated by complete morons. It wants to be smart and witty, when none of the characters are either of those things. And yes, I include Ryder and Slaters characters in that. They live in a world populated with people with IQ's of 70 and since our two "heroes" have IQ's of around 90, that makes them genius's in this film. Except they are still really stupid by normal human standards, so it makes the entire film pretty dumb.
A 13 for me. Just for getting to see Winona act a LITTLE sexy for a brief moment of her career.
I would need to see this again, but that would mean watching Christian Nicholson again, and I don't think I'm up for that. The film gets more credit for what it was trying to do, rather than how well it does it. It is cynical, dark humored, a little mean, and basically tries to flip the bird at poeple to whom I would like to flip off. A 14.
ReplyDeleteI have a thing for Winona. We share a birthday. The only reason I started making music was so that Winona Ryder would sleep with me. It never worked.
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