Among all film genres, teen sex comedies are often the most colorful time capsules of their era. They’re full of the fashions of the day, which encompasses everything from clothes to music to slang to attitudes about sex. They’re also under no burden to be respectable. They can get low down with dumb jokes and gratuitous nudity. These films don’t need to speak to The New York Film Critics Circle Jerk. They need to speak to 17 year olds. For that crowd and these films, it’s all about the here and the now.
I doubt that director Amy Heckerling (and screenwriter Cameron Crowe, adapting his own 1981 book about when he went undercover as a student at a San Diego high school) gave any thought here to the idea that she was crafting a time capsule of the early 80s, but that’s what she did and it’s part of this film’s lasting appeal. If you want to mainline the shaggy, checkered Vans, New Wave, sex-crazed sunny days spirit of ’82, you could do a lot worse than this.
Even if the music selections are dominated by bad California cocaine rock (solo tracks from EVERY former member of The Eagles, yeesh!), Heckerling manages to slip the more relevant likes of The Go-Go’s, The Cars and Oingo Boingo into some of the film’s most pivotal moments–and she had to fight for that shit (listen to the DVD commentary).
This isn’t merely boner-comedy junk. Heckerling has a few things on her mind.
The story is a remarkably coherent series of episodes, an entire school year condensed down to a relentlessly snappy ninety minutes. It seems loosely structured, but feels tight as a drum. Nothing feels missing. The storyline that grabs people the most is probably Jennifer Jason Leigh (age 19 in real life, but playing age 15 here) and her uneasy navigation into the confusing world of sex and boys while she tries to find herself. Meanwhile, the nicest guy she meets (Brian Backer, a mega-relatable nebbish, speaking for myself as a former teenage spazz) manages to work up the nerve to ask her out, but then EMBARASSINGLY (in a moment that he’ll surely never forget for the rest of his life) chokes at the prospect of going all the way even when she makes the first move.
While that’s going on, our nice guy gets coached in the ways of The Lothario by an older big-talker (Robert Romanus, who has a ton of the film’s most quotable lines) who makes money scalping concert tickets.
Then there’s “single, successful guy” Judge Reinhold as a burger-flipper who keeps losing his jobs, loses his girlfriend and is constantly on the verge of snapping.
And you can’t forget Sean Penn as the most iconic teen stoner in movie history. Penn would very quickly become regarded as a Serious Actor after this and would never be this funny in a movie again.
Somewhere in there, a young Forest Whitaker shows up as the intense school football star, Eric Stoltz is one of Penn’s drug buddies, cult movie starlet Kelli Maroney shines in a small part (I love her in Night of the Comet and Chopping Mall and I always forget that she’s in this, too!) and Phoebe Cates commands the full attention of pretty much every guy in the audience as Leigh’s older best friend who’s clearly lying through her perfect teeth about how great her long-distance boyfriend is. For some of us, her classic poolside topless scene is as important to cinema history as the Odessa steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin. Also, you can spy one Nicolas Coppola (before he became Nicolas Cage) for about five total seconds in the background here and there.
There are lot of characters and almost all of the ones we care about work or hang out in the shopping mall. As I write this in 2019, malls are dying a slow death, but in the early 80s they were bustling places where teens worked after school and hooked up. Every one had a record store and a stereo store and a movie theater, as well as salons that would feather your hair and shops that were well-stocked with Jordache jeans.
If you’d like to pay a visit to that long-gone age, just put on this movie. It’s the cheapest vacation you’ll ever take.
Also, everything in this film is blissful and painful at the same time.