RogerBW's Blog

Heathers 21 February 2022

1989 black comedy, dir. Michael Lehmann, Winona Ryder, Christian Slater: IMDb / allmovie. Veronica's part of the Top Clique, but isn't actually into pointless cruelty and drunken sex. New student JD seems to offer an alternative…

For me this is a film that gets most things right. Yes, it's the product of an era when the idea of someone bringing a gun to school was rare enough to be shocking, and it plays that somewhat for laughs; but that just makes one of the film's key points early, that the adults have no idea how to respond to anything unexpected except with platitude and cliché. Oh, it's teenage suicide; we've seen terribly serious TV programmes about this, and we know just how to wring our hands. And the kids are no better: the student journalist is exultant, "Westerburg finally got one of these things and I'm not going to blow it". Just like Hans Gruber, JD understands how people will react, and indeed relies on it.

This was a spec script by Daniel Waters in reaction to John Hughes teen comedies; it was his first script, and Lehmann's first film as director. And while they both went on to have non-trivial careers, this is definitely the film that stands out for both of them. It was also star-making for Ryder (who'd previously done Beetlejuice) and Slater (The Name of the Rose) – and arguably also Shannen Doherty as Heather Duke, who went from this to Beverly Hills 90210, but who apparently thought the film was a straight drama until she saw the final cut.

In a standard teen film, Veronica would be trying to get into the top clique; here she starts already in it, perhaps because that story has been done. Congratulations, you won; now what's the victory worth? The clique offers one pattern of behaviour, and JD offers another, but what Veronica comes to realise is that she has to make her own decisions about what to do, and then do it – which for me calls back to the accidental feminism of Blood Simple. (And Ryder moves very effectively from standard teenage expressions and body language to something more mature, particularly in the later sequences as she becomes increasingly dishevelled.)

It's dreamlike more than strictly realistic, and the electronic soundtrack by David Newman is a sad disappointment (I found it particularly intrusive during the sequences in the woods), but this is a film that overall works very well for me. It was a box-office failure, but an immediate success on VHS and Laserdisc; I wonder whether people felt more able to admit enjoyment watching on their own rather than "on show" with friends or family at a cinema, or perhaps something genuinely subversive just doesn't play well with the mainstream audience.

For me this is ancestral to those teen films that did something more than "woo, we are teenagers": The Craft, Ginger Snaps, Chastity Bites, Barely Lethal. If you don't already know it, well worth a look.

Once more if you want more of my witterings you should listen to Ribbon of Memes.

Tags: film reviews

See also:
The Craft
Barely Lethal
Chastity Bites
Blood Simple
Die Hard (1988)

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1