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25 Years Later, ‘Clueless’ Is Totally Hollywood’s Defining Teen Movie
Every few years, people claim teen movies are dead. Then something comes along that supposedly resuscitates the genre, spawning copycats and spinoffs and beneficiaries galore. Perhaps no film embodies this funereal cycle more than “Clueless,” a masterpiece that challenged any snob-and-a-half who thought adolescent frolics made for substandard cinema.
When “Clueless” arrived 25 years ago, on July 19, 1995, the teen-happy ’80s had fully receded, taking with them the “Risky Business” wannabes and the John Hughes flourishes. What followed in Cher Horowitz’s wake was arguably the greatest teen-movie crest in Hollywood history, lasting through the mid-2000s and making “Clueless” a phenomenon that united multiple generations. It was written and directed by a Boomer, marketed to Gen X, made a contemporary classic by millennials and transformed into a point of nostalgia by Gen Z.
There’s no single explanation for how “Clueless” became “Clueless,” aside from the oversimplified fact that it is the best. But its two-decades-and-counting ascendancy helps to clarify why the teen movie sometimes seems endangered: Even when they’re good, they’re rarely this good. In modernizing the matchmaking antics of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” Amy Heckerling sought not to capture the precise lingua franca of ’90s kids but to create an idiosyncratic ethos that matched the general teen experience. She understood that the audience she was serving had been baptized by MTV and a thriving magazine trade, making them exceedingly literate in all things pop culture. She also knew that, even if fads come and go, American teens share commonalities unique to their peer group, region and economic background. One generation’s “Baldwin” is another generation’s “bae.”
In surveying the development route that “Clueless” took, we can glean insight into its longevity. Heckerling had directed one of the 1980s’ signature teen hits, “Fast Times at...
