Like Totally Clueless
Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, & Brittany Murphy. Clueless (Paramount Pictures, 1995).
Short skirts, phat rides, and a cult classic.
Thirty years ago, on a warm July afternoon, my two best friends and I went to see Clueless. There had been heavy promos for the film and seeing as how it was aimed at teens, we wanted to go see it. We were instantly obsessed! The cast was full of young unknowns, the characters were like no others we had ever encountered, the fashion was enviously outrageous, and the lingo would soon become popular.
Clueless took the world by storm when young people latched onto the film. In the early and mid 80s, there were tons of movies about high schoolers such as Sixteen Candles and Valley Girl, but there seemed to be a drought of good ones as the decade went on. The ’95 release of Clueless brought teen movies back into the forefront.
Cher Horowitz, played by Alicia Silverstone, is a Beverly Hills babe with a sweet ride, endless credit on her cards, and a group of friends that are just as naively entitled as her. The movie cast upcoming stars like Paul Rudd, Brittany Murphy, and Donald Faison, amongst others.
The appeal of the movie for teens was that these were technically their peers. Clueless is about high school students trying to navigate friendships, romances, classes, and keeping their parents off of their cases while having fun. Every teen can relate to these things, but these characters were cooler in every way possible. It’s no wonder that the movie was a success both in the box office and critically.
It became a cultural phenomenon over the summer. The stars made appearances on MTV Summer Break segments and live shows, which was during the era when MTV was actually cool, so it really meant something. Girls wanted to dress like Cher and her friends, teens used the memorable catchphrases, the soundtrack went platinum, and the overall success created an impact that recognized the value of the teen movies and the market appeal. Not only that, but the movie was turned into a television show with some of the main cast reprising their roles.
Clueless has become a cult classic with screenings of it still happening at theaters and nights in the park. People like to dress up in the trademark costumes and cite the film word-for-word, which isn’t hard to do if you’ve watched it repeatedly for 30 years. A lot of the time, people brush off teen movies because they feel it’s not made for an adult audience, but the kids who watched it when it was released have become the adults who are keeping it alive, and will continue to do so for the next 30 years.