Official Synopsis
Cher, a beautiful and self-absorbed high school student who spends her days focused on assembling the ideal fashion ensemble, talking her way out of bad grades and searching for the perfect boyfriend. What Cher discovers is that popularity only gets you so far, looks can be deceiving and love is sometimes found where you least expect it.
While there isn’t much of a mystery of how this movie plays out, the fun of the film is watching the actors give their best. Alicia Silverstone’s role as the lead character Cher could not have been more perfect. She brings the glitz and glamor of a high school teenager who believes she owns the world, but also the wonderfully cute innocence of a girl trying to do the right thing. She does a fabulous job of leading the girl rat pack. To help her out, she’s also got some future stars in the late Brittany Murphy, as Cher’s fashion makeover experiment, Tai. You also have Paul Rudd as Cher’s stepbrother Josh and the likes of Stacey Dash (does she ever age?), Breckin Meyer, Jeremy Sisto and of course the ever funny Donald Faison.
Actors aside, the film is terribly predictable. It certainly doesn’t have the pizazz and rawness of the Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but it does emulate the entire persona of high-end west coast life. Quite frankly, that could have been good or bad, depending on what you were expecting from the movie. When it was originally advertised in 1995, the trailer just seemed like a ditzy adventure through the life of a rich girl. What came out of this film was a charming reminder that regardless of riches and glamor, there are still people out there that simply want to make someone else’s life a bit better.
It may not be as epic as some teen comedies in the past, but it certainly belongs on your shelf when it comes to funny films with memorable moments. It’s a rare commodity to find a teen movie that doesn’t depend on obscenity and lewdness to drive the comedy, and that is what makes Clueless a somewhat timeless classic (well, for me anyway).
As for the Blu-ray side of things, it falls somewhere in the middle. It’s not as good as one of the major Blu-ray releases from Paramount (such as MI4), but it’s definitely better than movies like Rain Man from 20th Century Fox, which is plagued by graininess and artifacts in the picture. Clueless feeds off the HD transfer, as you’ll get beautiful reds, yellows, blues and greens. Some of the outfits that Cher wears look outstanding in HD. Once you get into the daylight shots of the film, you’ll see heavy amounts of graininess surrounding some of the lighter areas of the shot. While there are no artifacts, the graininess makes this transfer tough to love. Thankfully, there is no color banding, but it needed a bit more cleaning to make this perfect (or near perfect).
Having said all that, the soundtrack is mastered in DTS 5.1 and sounds perfect. It actually makes me want to go buy the soundtrack. Excellent audio mastering from Paramount’s group.
Finally, here’s what to expect from the special features of Clueless:
– Clue or False Trivia Game
– The Class of ’95
– Creative Writing
– Fashion 101
– Language Arts
– ‘Suck ‘N Blow’
– A Tutorial
– Driver’s Ed
– We’re History
– Trailers
Some of the bulk to this content was from a 2005 release of the film on DVD. The major featurettes with cast/crew come directly from that, which doesn’t make it any less entertaining; it just makes it sad when you see Brittany Murphy on camera. The majority of the features are pretty solid here, but I would have died to hear commentary from director Amy Heckerling and cast/crew. I think that would have been wonderful.
For a $22 release (and $11.99 on Amazon), this isn’t too bad.
