Now that we got class elections out of the way (give or take a disgraced educator), it seemed fitting to find a movie that would cover the rest of the school year.
Okay, not my sharpest transition, but deal with it, we're here to talk about Amy Heckerling's seminal high school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
This was a first for me - I knew the angle I wanted to dig into as soon as the movie was done, but it took a while to figure out how to put it.
Which is even more fitting because I wanted to focus on the movie's surprisingly sharp sense of awkwardness.
Yes, this is a good thing.
It's something I'd been kind of aware of before, but this is the first time that I really appreciated how much this movie is willing to let its teenage characters be, well, teenagers.
I'm impressed with how it's willing to have that awkwardness while also never quite feeling like a cringe comedy (and I'm a sucker for a good cringe comedy, so don't take that as a dig.) The movie is able to have an arc like Sean Penn's surfer burnout Jeff Spicoli and at the same time Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy Hamilton navigating dating and the significance of losing one's virginity, and the shifts never feel jarring.
Part of what helps is that it never leans too heavily to either side of that line. To use them as examples again: as goofy as Spicoli is, the wildest his stunts get is having a pizza ordered into school or having to bluff out of getting a car wrecked. Stacy, meanwhile, has moments like her less than romantic first time - in a baseball dugout (a great detail being her being distracted by the obscene graffiti on the ceiling above her) and for as weird as it gets, it never feels like the movie is trying to heap abuse on her for it.
The movie is more than Stacy and Jeff, of course. We also have the similarly young and inexperienced Mark (Brian Backer), the increasingly unlucky Brad (Judge Reinhold) and the older, presumably wiser Linda and Mike (Phoebe Cates and Robert Romanus respectively.)
If there's a word that sums up the larger arc of all of these characters, it's 'unromantic.' Not in the sense of relationships, though there is some of that as shown by scenes like the above-mentioned dugout. In this case, unromantic being with regards to the idea of a rose-tinted high school experience. It's surprising to remember two years after this would see the rise of John Hughes's teen comedies ,given how differently Heckerling tackles things by comparison.
There's something that feels more, for lack of a better term, human in the way Heckerling presents her teens. They can be messy. They can make mistakes with consequences that aren't simply written off the very next day. As cool and experienced as an older kid may be, they may not have all the answers they want you to believe they do (as the movie shows from both Linda and Mike.) They are flawed, but ultimately likable individuals in a way that it feels like many later mainstream high school comedies are reluctant to show.
To bring this full circle, the culmination of Stacy's story is one that feels strange to see in a modern mainstream high school film - after an awkward hook-up with Mike, she finds herself pregnant and in need of an abortion (that alone being a risky prospect.) The resolution of the arc isn't a big dramatic beat, but a few smaller ones - an attempt to get a ride from her older brother (Brad) which he figures out, but ultimately still supports without asking too many questions, and an act of revenge by Linda in the form of graffiti. Despite being smaller beats, they still feel like a satisfying resolution narratively and thematically.
Also, it's not part of my main point, but I do feel like
I need to give a shout out to the late, great Ray Walston
as the put-upon Mr. Hand. Another great showcasing
of that crotchety snark that he could play so very, very well.
I need to give a shout out to the late, great Ray Walston
as the put-upon Mr. Hand. Another great showcasing
of that crotchety snark that he could play so very, very well.
I don't want to say 'they couldn't make this movie anymore', because that is a phrase that feels like it's been misused too often for misguided commentary on culture. At the same time, this is a movie it's hard to picture being made now because of how frank, if funny, it is about the messier sides of teenage life. I wouldn't say it can't be made, but it would definitely not be on the level of a studio release quite like this one.
Which makes me appreciate that this happened at the level it did even more.
I could take this as a moment to add my vote to the larger sentiment that we as a society never really gave Heckerling her due as a director, but that would be a whole other topic, and the fact is, I'm running out of September.
October is right around the corner, and, as I promised, I'll be doing another franchise this time out.
And at the risk of laying it on too thick, this one's gonna be a real monster.
Till then
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