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Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Amy Heckerling. 1982. ⚃

[forty minutes pass]

I… may have seen this movies back in the 80s? I mean, I pretty much watch anything that was available when I was a teenager, and you’d think this would be? But I have absolutely no recollection of seeing this movie.

And it’s not what I expected. I thought this was going to be like a John Hughes movie, but it’s a lot more like a … low-budget American indie movie: There’s so much awkward stuff going on here. Some of it is definitely on purpose, but much of it seems unintentional. I mean, just by having actors that are really bad.

But Sean Penn is awesome, dude.

[twenty minutes pass]

The further along this movie goes, the more I’m getting into it. It’s just really … amiable. There’s so many fun, inconsequential scenes — if the movie had been made 30 years later, it would all have been “cringe humour”, but it’s not: It’s just fun and silly.

[the end]

Well, that’s such a weird ending.

I wonder whether Heckerling had to fight for every single scene in here, because it seems like none of these scenes should be allowed to be in a movie like this.

It’s so much fun, and everything about it is surprising.

But what does Rogert Eber think?

(One star.)

Tee hee.

I’m watching the DVD extras now… and Heckerling hired Judge Reinhold (who was way too old for the role and much older than the other actors) because, as she said, she just couldn’t find anybody else for the role. (Reinhold was the boyfriend of Heckerling’s best friend and next door neighbour.) The person originally thought of for that role was… Nick Cage (or Coppola, as he was back then).

Oh my god.

That would have been so much better! That would have been awesome! Because Reinhold sticks out like a bloody, pustulating thumb.

(The reason Heckerling gives for not hiring him was that he was 17, so he couldn’t work as long days because, you know, child labour.)

Oh oh, right. The reason the movie seems so … out of time is that it isn’t an 80s movie at all. Heckerling says that all the things in the movie didn’t seem like such a big deal to her, but that a new… era was coming, and that’s totally right. It got an “R” rating (and almost got an “X”) because it’s out of step with time.

It’s the last 70’s teenage movie.

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