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“Clueless,” directed by Amy Heckerling and released on July 19, 1995 shows the life of Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), navigating her feelings and what she wants in life. This movie stars Silverstone as Horowitz, a wealthy, stylish, popular teenager who lives in Beverly Hills with her litigator father, best friend Dionne Davenport, and step-brother Josh.
The thing about Horowitz is, she’s not your typical movie “popular, blonde, and gorgeous” teenage girl, she’s kind, morally disciplined and she firmly believes in dating more mature men rather than a shallow high school boy. It’s refreshing to see a blonde popular girl portrayed as a good person in western media because it goes against the usual stereotype for that demographic.
When a new girl named Tai transferred to Horowitz’s high school, she made it her mission to transform her to help her out fit in better. To Horowitz, Tai was like a baby bird waiting for her mama’s guidance. To improve Tai’s life, Horowitz and Davenport gave her a makeover, brought her to parties, and introduced her to new people.
After an incident at the mall that almost resulted in Tai’s death, she became the talk of the school. With this new popularity, Davenport started asking for advice from Tai instead of Horowitz who she usually talks to about her problems and curiosities. When Horowitz saw this, she felt conflicted as if she was being replaced by Tai.
Near the end of the movie, Horowitz realized her feelings for her step-brother Josh, and they started dating. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that because they’re not related, but it did bring a bit of discomfort because Josh was quite literally her brother figure.
Horowitz’s other love interests like Christian who turned out to be gay, felt like he had little to no impact to the plot or Horowitz’s character, he felt almost like a filler episode because he just slowly disappeared throughout the movie after he showed little to no interest in Horowitz.
Throughout the film, characters such as Horowitz and Tai went through many changes, grew as a person, and improved themselves. The thing is, there was little to no development from Davenport which was disappointing, because her character had great potential to improve, especially due to the problems she had with her boyfriend. With how much screen time she has and her important role as Horowitz’s best friend, some character development would’ve been nice.
The title “Clueless” is very ironic and fitting into the film because at the beginning of the movie, you would assume Tai is the clueless one because she’s new, gullible, and needed Horowitz’s guidance to thrive at school, but near the end of the movie, you realize that Horowitz is “clueless” as well. This movie illustrates how no matter how perfect your life is, you can still feel lost and clueless at times, especially as a teenager.
This film overexaggerates teen stereotypes in a comedic way to serve an entertainment purpose. It’s unique, iconic, and depicts teen emotions accurately. Overall, I would rate this movie a 4.12📼 out of 5.00📼 and I would recommend this movie to young teen girls who wanna watch an entertaining movie in a high school setting.
