I just watched Heathers (with Wynona Ryder) for the first time. (I know, I’m behind the times. :rolleyes: )
I hated it but I get the sense I’m missing out on an inside joke. Was this film being clever on a certain level that I’m missing? Apparently, I totally missed the boat about All That Jazz. So, humbled, I approach this film cautiously. Am I just not getting it, or did this film suck?
How old are you?
That movie (which I love) kind of assume you are a child of the 80’s and understand not only the whole clique thing, but also how it feels to be on the outside of those cliques and what if feels like to be used by them.
Have to agree with Joey P. It’s a generational thing. I didn’t find the *American Pie *movies funny at all, if that means anything. But Heathers… that was the American high school experience brought to life, only darker and funnier. Ditto for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Three O’Clock High, and Better Off Dead.
Also, Winona Ryder and Christian Slater were huge stars back then.
HH, Class of '90
I think if you didn’t see this, when you were an uncool & unrelentingly hassled 13 year old girl it may lack a certain je ne sais quois.
However, although the movie overall doesn’t age well, the commentary on how people lionize others in death, even if they were, objectively speaking, douchebags in life, remains valid and relevant.
Class of '93.
I think the movie also had an edginess that was unusual for movies about high school at the time (when John Hughs type movies were more the norm) but is more commonplace now.
God damn. Why do I smoke these things?
Class of '88
Because you’re an idiot, dad.
Also, the movie is highly quotable.
“Because you’re an idiot.”
You’re missing a pre-teen/teenage crush on either Winona Ryder or Christian Slater (or both).
Without that, even at the time, the movie was not all that good.
I blame the MTV Video Games.
This is one of those movies that was fairly startling and innovative in its time, but it invited so many copycats, some of which did it better, that the original feels tame and derivative now. I had the same problem with The Godfather.
Sorry, it’s the “you had to be there” syndrome of movies.
Is high school any different now?
I haven’t seen it for years but at the time, it skewed way younger than what I was (um, class of 74) and I still thought it was hilarious when I saw it in the theater. I should watch it again to see how I look at it now.
I remember it having tons of great quotes too. Yeah, I just found the IMDB quote page.
“You think you’re a rebel? You’re not a rebel you’re fucking psychotic!”
“I say we just grow up, be adults and die.”
“Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count.”
“Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw. Do I look like Mother Theresa?”
“I love my dead gay son.”
“Excuse me, I think I know Heather a little bit better than you do. If she were going to slit her wrists, the knife would be spotless.”
“Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing left to offer the school except for date rapes and AIDS jokes.”
“When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.”
“What’s the up-chuck factor on that?”
“Now I’ve seen a lot of bullshit… angel dust, switchblades, sexually perverse photography involving tennis rackets…”
And on and on. Damn, now I really want to see it again.
My son (just finished 8th grade) doesn’t understand what we’re talking about when we talk about cliques or social groups. He found The Breakfast Club bewildering, not because he didn’t understand the issues the kids faced, but because he didn’t understand the social divides - he couldn’t grok why Claire wouldn’t say hi to Brian in the hallway. His only experience, and that of his high school aged friends, is a racial divide - black kids in one group and everyone else in another, not economic, academics or interest oriented. If *Heathers *was made today, it would be race dividing the students.
He’s in the Evanston school district, by the way - the same town John Hughes modeled all his movie schools after.
“what’s your damage? Brad says you’re being a real cooze”- Probably the only use of that word in a movie.
I watched it again with my younger brother – he was about 23-24 at the time and hadn’t seen it when it first came out. He got the cliquishness of it, but it was the over-the-topness of it, combined with the very Disney-fied look that lost him. But you’re right that it may be that some of what we relate to is the outsider-trying-to-fit-in. (I think of Mean Girls as some kind of shirttail relation to Heathers.) My brother was never an outsider in school; he was always one of the cool kids, so I suppose that he didn’t quite get that part of it.
But he agreed that it was quotable, and liked that they blowed shit up good.
Actually, I was thinking the OP was older, not younger.
Either way, I’m sure HS is still the same. I’m sure there are still Cciques, just like there were in Heathers, just like there were in Grease. But their not the same cliques. Someone from the Grease Era, might not understand what emo means, while someone from the Heathers area might not understand why someone who calls themself a Pink Lady is wearing a leather jacket that says T-birds on it.
I loved Heathers and I graduated from HS in 1992. But I also loved Jawbreaker, and that came out several years later. IMO, it was the same basic idea, but Heathers was darker and infinitely more quotable.
High school class of '85. Heathers has been one of my favorite movies for years. I love the invented slang and the cartoonish, Tim-Burton-esque aesthetic (Winona Ryder wasn’t the only cast member who also appeared in Beetlejuice, btw).
And I’ve been quoting **Heathers **for years:
“You were nothing before you met me. You were a bluebird. You were a brownie. You were a Girl Scout cookie.”
“Great pâté, Mom, but I gotta motor if I’m gonna make that funeral.”
and on and on…
I’m really surprised this many posts have gone by with no one talkiing about the movie’s fundamental premise. It is a satire about teenage conformity run amok. When the the way to be “cool” is to kill yourself, obviously, something has gone wrong. If the movie has a “message,” it is that kids are doing some pretty f–ked up things just to be accepted by their peers; any sense of imposed social order or outside adult authority has been removed, and our kids exist in a moral vacuum. Winona Ryder’s character is basically redeemed by rebelling against Slater’s character, who takes advantage of the casual amorality around him to indulge in anarchy. But she is forced to make this choice alone, with no adult to confide in or guide her. The movie is basically saying we’re throwing kids to the wolves, and the wolves are other kids.