Rich man’s Mean Girls, the parts I like, I like way more than Mean Girls. I think Heathers is gonna stick with me more.
★★★☆☆
Heathers is an eighties movie (1988 to be exact). The haircuts are eighties. The slang is eighties. All of the women wear shoulder padded pantsuits. They look like fucking linebackers. After about 20 minutes, I was terribly bored because I would’ve sworn this movie was exactly like Mean Girls (with shoulder pads); however, that’s when you’ll realize what the dark stands for in dark comedy. Turns out, murder can be funny! The broad plot of this movie is that Winona Ryder plays Veronica, a girl that has just been inducted into the most popular clique at school, consisting of three girls all named Heather. After realizing that the way the Heathers treat others is wrong, she teams up with her new boyfriend, J.D., played by Christian Slater to get revenge. Veronica quickly learns that J.D. is a sociopathic murderer. Laughter ensues.
I loved the middle of this movie. There were great one-liners: “I’ve seen a lot of bullshit. Angel dust. Switchblades. Sexually perverse photography exhibits involving tennis rackets.” “Well, fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” But my absolute favorite would have to be this gem: “I love my dead gay son!”. The acting is fine for the young actors in this film. When Josh assigned me this film he said that Christian Slater was at his Christian Slateriest, and boy was he right. It felt like he was doing an impression of Robin Williams doing an impression of Jack Nicholson the whole time. Go watch Aladdin if you need a point of reference. Also, they put him in a trench coat so that you know he was dark and brooding.
I thought the beginning did a good job laying out the scenery, and the middle was funny with a unique twist on the high school genre. But by the time we got to the end, I was a little tired of the characters and the setting. I’m not a huge dark comedy fan, and it was starting to wear on me. I didn’t really care how the plot turned out at the end and either the one-liners got less clever or I got less interested. Overall, there are some scenes and lines that I will remember forever, and I’m glad I saw it, but I don’t think I’ll ever need to watch this one again.
Heathers is available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus.
I assigned Josh to review High Noon next week. I assigned Josh this film because Westerns feel rather uniquely American and it is the 4th of July. Plus, this is in my top 3 favorite westerns.
cinemateur 