Clueless (1995)

I never cared much about high school flicks, not even when I was in high school —Easy A is the exception since I love that movie—, so I never bothered to check out Clueless. Then I learnt there's a (young) Paul Rudd in it so of course I watched it. 

The story follows Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), a superficial, materialist, rather stupid, spoiled 16-year-old who only cares about herself and being the most popular kid in high school and does not believe in high school boyfriends. She also enjoys playing the good Samaritan so, after orchestrating a relationship between two of her teachers to improve their moods and get better grades without studying, she takes awkward tomboy Tai (Brittany Murphy) under her wing and decides to find her a boyfriend. Which only makes her realise she wants a boyfriend but finding the Balwin of her dreams turns out to be a much more difficult task than anticipated.

As I had anticipated, the plot, or whether the film is trying to pass as such, is very clichéd and predictable, and there are many subplots that feel like they don't belong as they add nothing to the story. In addition, it delivers several messages that are just wrong —virginity is bad, and you need to change yourself in order to make others like you.

The characters are terrible too. First, they act extremely mature for their age; second, most of them are plain stupid and unlikeable. Cher is about the most annoying character I've seen in a teen movie —actually, no, that would be Sierra Burgess—, she is quite a bitch and couldn't sympathize with her nor care about her, not even for a second. Tai, at first, is quite interesting but eventually, she turns into yet another dumb character who differentiates from Cher only because she is more experienced, sexually. Cher's best friend Dionne is just as shallow, and her boyfriend who doesn't nothing other than calling her "woman" and pissing her off is quite annoying. There are a few characters I liked, Travis the stoner and Cher's step-brother, Josh, but unfortunately there's not enough of them in the film.

I didn't find Clueless particularly funny either. Despite all, the film still is slightly enjoyable and the credits entirely go to the cast. While I found her voice very annoying —I felt the same about each actress in here though, maybe they had problems recording high pitched voices, I don't know—, Alicia Silverstone does a pretty good job as the clueless, spoiled brat, and her cuteness and sweetness make the film more bearable, and she has great chemistry with Stacey Dash which makes the friendship between Cher and Dionne very believable. It's Paul Rudd though that absolutely steals the scene with a charming performance as the sweet, sensitive and hard-working Josh.