Ahhhhh...the great 80's teenage comedies. There's Fast Times at Ridgemont
High. There's Sixteen Candles. There's The Breakfast Club. Then there's Heathers.
Many people went to see Heathers expecting it to be a normal 80's teen comedy. Those people walked out of the movie theater. The few of us that realized that this movie was the blackest comedy ever made saw this movie (repeatedly) and launched it into cult movie status. With such an innocent sounding title, it's hard to imagine that this movie would remain over 10 years later as perhaps the most controversial comedy ever made.
Heathers is a "slap in the face" comedy about popularity, lack of popularity, and teenage suicide. The school "girlie clique" is made up of three girls named Heather (who are basically clones of each other) and Veronica (Winona Ryder). Then Jason Dean comes to town (played brilliantly by Christian Slater) and wins over Veronica's heart. In a fit of rage caused by the Heathers, Veronica and Jason become a teenage Bonnie and Clyde and initiate a killing spree (cleverly masking the killings as teen suicide). The writing and direction is absolutely brilliant and the originality of this film smashes any other teenage comedy of the day.
The majority of the fans of this movie happen to be female, which is probably no coincidence. This movie is intensely realistic in the ways it shows exactly how cruel girl cliques can be so to unpopular girls in high school. In fact, it is probably the most frighteningly realistic movies on the subject, for any woman knows that teenage girls are heads and tails above boys in cruelness. Therefore, any girl who has suffered
through the popular/unpopular cat fight called "high school" will watch this movie nodding and saying "Finally, someone got it right." Despite the fact that the situations that occur in the movie are ridiculous, the shallowness and insecurities in this film are insanely realistic which is what makes this movie so much more powerful than the typical teen comedy.
Then there's the funny factor. I absolutely love comedies that are so controversial that they really straddle that line between "hysterical" and "too over the top". This movie holds this balance absolutely perfect. When the dialogue gets to the point that its almost too dark to be funny, the audience is dealt a great piece of dialogue like "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!" as a subtle reminder that this movie is for the most part tongue-in-cheek. The cast was a perfect pick (Shannon Doherty
plays one of the bitchy Heathers, 'nuff said). This, combined with the films guts makes it one of the best films of the day.
All-in-all, there's not too many people I would recommend this flick to, because very few people would "get the joke". If black comedies are your thing, then by all means indulge. However, don't say I didn't warn you. However, whether you love it or hate it, you're are 69% likely to be uttering phrases from the movie for all eternity, simply because the movie is "so very".
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