Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
Directed by Amy Heckerling
A group of Southern-California high school students ignore their studies in favor of indulging in their teenage distractions.
46 connections found
View:
46 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Fast Times at Ridgemont High to
Because of the film’s timeless message, Booksmart evokes the pantheon of teen/college comedies that come to define generations: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Dazed and Confused, 10 Things I Hate About You, and, yes, even Superbad.
Because of this, high school comedies have been a major force in the film world since their propagation in the 1980s on the back of John Hughes, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Porky’s.”
Each generation has their Fast Times at Ridgemont High or their Superbad (which is somehow already 12 years old).
Dever and Wilde have both compared the film to John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club in interviews and Wilde screened Fast Times At Ridgemont High for the cast the day before they commenced shooting.
It’s a delightful little miracle in its way: a The Breakfast Club (1985) message smuggled inside an outlandish Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) package.
Booksmart is a teen dramedy that lacks the razor-sharp wit, intelligence and delicate blend of comedy, drama and satire found in coming-of-age films like Mean Girls, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ghost World, Clueless, Heathers, The Breakfast Club and many more that have managed to transcend their own genre to become timeless classics or cult classics.
Those that do stand out — Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything…, the films of John Hughes — often become generational classics.
More directly, thank Kelly Fremon Craig, whose directorial debut confronts millennial teens with the same authenticity and verve that helped “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” jumpstart a revolution when it crash-landed into the ’80s.
There is a short list of high school films that can grasp and accurately depict the pain, anguish and heartache of the teenage experience: “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” the works of John Hughes, “Mean Girls,” “Easy A.”
She’s not like Jennifer Jason Leigh’s naive Gen X’er Stacy in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
If you’re a filmmaker trying to make a movie about teen girl angst, you better damn well have something new or original to say, because you’ll always be competing with classics like Mean Girls , Clueless , and even Fast Times at Ridgemont High .
Over the past 40 years, Fast Times at Ridgemont High , Dazed and Confused , Can’t Hardly Wait , American Pie , and Superbad have had huge impacts on the moviegoers growing up with them.
In spirit, “Superbad” isn’t so different from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982) and other rude teen comedies made years ago.
The press that’s been coming out so far keeps comparing “Superbad” to the 1982 teen classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
Not only is “Superbad” one of the funniest movies of the year, but it also ranks up there with “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Risky Business” and “American Pie” as one of the best teen sex comedies ever made.
It’s another iteration on the Fast Times at Ridgemont High clone genre, another story about a pair of losers who want to get laid before they leave high school and set off for college.
As Good As: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sixteen Candles, Clueless and any other teen comedy you love.
Apatow is the writer-director of "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," but "Superbad" -- for all its outrageous action and crude sexual content -- owes as much to such time-compressed films as "American Graffiti," "Dazed and Confused" and even Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" as to Apatow's previous work and such frank predecessors as "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
The parallels between this and Noah’s own life are sometimes so obvious that it’s hard to believe that Leigh has given the movie her approval: for example, Scarlett Johansson’s actress Nicole here was the star of a teen sex comedy, while Leigh began her career in Fast Times At Ridgemont High and, furthermore, when Adam Driver’s theatre director Charlie is revealed to have grown intimate with a colleague, it’s hard not to think that this is some thinly-veiled reference to Noah’s collaborator and now-partner Greta Gerwig.
Advertisement
Actually, I can recall only one American movie in which a pregnant teenager gets an abortion, and that was Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), with Jennifer Jason Leigh as the unwilling mother.
Jim (Jason Biggs)’s storyline also borrows heavily from the Farrelly’s movies (mostly “There’s Something About Mary”) and various other teen flicks like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”, but at least it’s hilarious.
But with a healthy sense of humor about youth and sex, this movie will earn a coveted spot next to Fast Times at Ridgemont High in every college kid's video collection.
The following year offered Fast Times at Ridgemont High, with a similar menu of sexually explicit gags and innuendo.
It’s hardly the graduating class of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
It's as if the final print of Fast Times at Ridgemont High had been directed by the Farrelly brothers: Damn the torpedoes.
Both of them are sad clones of a movie character: Jeff Spiccoli, sketched so spookily by Sean Penn in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Bill and Ted differ from Spiccoli, their "stoner" predecessor, only in that there are no drug references here to account for their allegedly jocular lack of ambition or interest in education or self-improvement.
The setup, with its theme of seeing people beyond their public facades and not insisting that they to live up to your fantasy version of them, has more in common with “ Gone Girl ” than “ Fast Times at Ridgemont High .”
There are no iconic high school characters like Slater and Wooderson from “Dazed and Confused,” John Milner and Toad of “American Grafitti,” Spicoli from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” Cher (“Clueless”), or of course—Ferris Bueller.
Advertisement
The first 20 minutes coast along on the fumes of Rogen's established likability and the surprise of seeing Franco playing Sean Penn's role from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
The appeal of funny stoners prancing around onscreen has its limits: There's a reason, for example, why Jeff Spicoli was not the central character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Be assured, after a decade of razor-sharp Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Heathers movie clones, She's All That is a kinder, gentler tale, a soft and strangely innocent tale for younger, less cynical filmgoers.