Clueless: Vibrant and Entertaining Portrayal of High School Life

Beauty is everything. You need to change your image to fit into society. Clueless follows Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a rich, spoiled but charming valley girl high schooler with a passion for matchmaking and a lack of self-awareness, as she navigates through life, high school and tries to maintain her popularity, friends and possibly find love. With her friend Dionne(Stacey Dash) by her side, they take it upon themselves to transform the new girl in school, Tai (Brittany Murphy). Clueless is a fun, vibrant and crazy film movie that has a great story, and characters.

One scene that stood out in Clueless is in the first few minutes when Cher has to give her speech in Debate class. This scene kind of sums up the type of person Cher is. From the jump we, as well the class know that Cher’s Dad is a lawyer but one thing we aren’t aware of is how smart Cher is. Having a Dad as a lawyer she is very good at arguing her way around things (and we see more of this as the film goes on). For example, she talked her teacher into boosting her grade up. So even though her speech is obviously historically incorrect, you can’t argue her. Additionally, there is a part of her speech in this scene that served as an allusion. She used the phrase, “May I please remind you that it does not say R.S.V.P on the Statue of Liberty” you can tell it’s an implied reference to actual events and facts about the USA.

Clueless does a really good job of casting someone who is likable. On-screen Cher is a complete bitch but on the other hand, she’s still watchable especially with her dialogue. The dialogue in this movie is very subtext because the characters always say what they mean. Cher’s delivery of dialogue is top-notch and even though she’s extremely mean and selfish, she does change at the end of the movie. She showed her potential to change throughout the movie and that’s what makes viewers keep watching. The other characters are also very lovable and great because unlike other high school movies they have depth. The movie establishes that these popular girls have a soul and aren’t just there to be mean.

I love how this movie is kind of like a time capsule for that time period. It’s still a pretty accurate representation of the cliques and popularity of what high school. This is one of the only films that make all of the minor characters just as important to the central plot as everyone else. Everyone had a specific role to play for how short or how long they’re in the movie and they all play that character really well.