Heathers (1989)

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I finally got around to seeing Heathers after all of these years. It is kind of funny seeing the parallels between Chrstian Slater's J.D. and his character on Mr. Robot.The good: It very much captures the teenage angst of the late 80's in pre-Internet world. Slater and Ryder do excellent jobs with their characters. There are many quotable lines and funny moments. This is a very dark comedy and you can tell that tongues or often planted firmly in cheek.The bad: This movie could never be made today with the epidemic of school schootings and teen suicides etc. Slater's character was very prescient in forseeings what would be coming a decade later. One can even argue that poplularization of a film like this spread the message of the anguished, outsider teen who gets glory by attacking a school and killing people. but obviously the filmmakers cannot be held responsible for what happens later.The other thing that bothers me about the film is that it often falls into as many cliches as it avoids. 80's teen films were very homophobic. Here we see the typical set-up: Football players call the protagonist/villain a f*g, he then reciprocates in framing this elaborate scheme in which the boys die allegedly as gay lovers. It is often not clear where the satire ends and genuine homophobia so prevalent in the 1980's comes into play. Yes, it is clearly a joke that the fact they have mineral water, a Joan Crawford postcard etc., which they just carry around, is a sure sign they are gay. It is less clear that the way their day is presented is supposed to be a joke - the town seems to all ridicule the dead boys for being gay and share a common disgust and the audience gets the impression that the gay frame-up is the just reward for having called Slater a f*g in the beginning.Moreover, the film really ends on a bit of a cliched note. Ryder has participated in several murders but just walks away from the attempted mass-murder of the school like nothing happened. This time, she will be nice to the overweight student with zero social life - who was really just a prop for ridicule in this world, so that makes it all ok. Again, this is a black comedy and parody but, again, it is not always clear what cliches of the teen genre they are avoiding and which ones, some greatly unacceptable by today's standards, they fall right into.

Interestingly, there are some films that were wildly popular at the time they were released, but today seem like they should never have been made in the first place. Such a movie is "Heathers", when viewed within the context of massive school shootings and rampant suicide by disaffected members of society. I really couldn't get into the spirit of this picture, if spirit is even the right word. Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) seemed like the only responsible girl in her clique of multiple Heathers, yet succumbed to the fake charm of outsider Jason Dean (Christian Slater). That J.D.'s last name was Dean ought to give one an indication that in matters of high school decorum, he truly was a rebel without a cause.As a satire and parody of teenage disaffection the story has some merit, but when the principal characters take it to it's ultimate extreme, it ceases to be funny. So much so, that it's easy to come away with the impression that J.D. and Veronica wound up killing all three Heathers when in fact it was only Heather Red (Kim Walker) that got the Drano treatment. Heather Green (Shannen Doherty) surfaced to take her place as Westerburg High's resident queen bee, while Heather Yellow (Lisanne Falk) was ignominiously dumped from the script following her bathroom meltdown attended by a supportive Veronica.Besides the understated James Dean connection, I also had to do a quick double take when the story line introduced Veronica's former best friend. Taking place in the fictional town of Sherwood, Ohio, I was quite expecting Archie, Reggie and Jughead to show up from nearby Riverdale, because when all was said and done, why else would you introduce a couple of your principal characters as Betty and Veronica?

I was drawn to this movie after watching Wynona Ryder's role in Stranger Things. I knew nothing about it before watching, assuming it was some sort of John Hughes-ish teen comedy. A few minutes in, I realized it was actually a surprisingly dark, surreal, violent movie. The comical approach to violence and suicide is jarring and a bit weird. I appreciated how it explored the parallels between high school and society at large. I understood that the deaths were symbolic of societal breakdowns representing what it means to be a good human being.Ultimately, taken in the context of recent school shootings, I feel the film has not aged well. It comes across as insensitive, homophobic, and vulgar. The way it seemingly normalized violence left me disgusted. Aside from the acting and cinematography, which I think were subpar, the plot and vibe of the film are just wrong. It straddles the line of comedy and social commentary, never leaning enough to one side and leaving the audience wondering, "are they serious?"

Roger Ebert's 1988 review for Heathers prefaced his bewilderment at its corrosive social politics as feeling like "a traveller in an unknown country" – but for most audiences who have survived high school to follow, Heathers will feel all too much like coming home. Certainly, for those who normally take their high school comedies with a healthy helping of the Beach Boys or Zac Efron, the film will be a slap in the face, but still leave them thankful it wasn't a slap of Draino or an 'Ich Lüge' bullet. Still, almost 30 years down the line, with its original high school audience now old enough to have high schoolers of their own (oh God...), in a culture sadly more entrenched in teen suicide and school shootings than ever, Heathers remains as eerily prescient as ever. The mountain of shoulder pads, synths and perms may conjure a blast from the past, but a film this razor-sharp couldn't feel more scarily topical, so scathingly audacious you have to laugh, if only in incredulity.If you're one of the precious few who enjoyed high school congratulations. Heathers will make you pay for it. If you're one of the many who saw high school as a battleground, kill-or-be-killed Heathers will literalize that maxim to an uncomfortable extent, with a score of nervous titters to follow. Running by the seat of its pantsuit with snappy, uncompromisingly jet-black satire, the film is hazily shot with that airy synth soundtrack cultivating an air of heightened delirium, as if a gossamer dream, or someone about to keel over, blackout drunk. The disjuncture is appropriate, as Heathers' navigation of the border between sweet and sour in corrosive high school cliques is on point, a savage middle finger to the conventions of high school movies – even predecessor cautionary tales a-la Rebel Without a Cause and Carrie aren't safe from its scorn. The humour is less laugh-out-loud funny, more 'smirk and occasionally bray in incredulity because it's uncomfortably true,' with even many sheepish laughs turning into uncomfortably guilty reversals that pull the rug out from under you and leave you lying there, aching for those who have ever been jeered at by a bully, been the bully jeering, or worse: been one of the multitudes who stood by and did nothing to stop it. Protagonist Veronica's "Life Sucks!" platitude may start as a joke, but it doesn't stay one for long. But, M.A.S.H. be damned, suicide isn't painless. And it's here where Heathers, good conversation piece with its heart in the right place as it is, raises some eyebrows, and not always in the cheerfully controversy-baiting way that it wants. Let me preface this by saying that I strongly disagree that any text navigating the mine field of teen suicide, bullying, or attempted mass killings need tiptoe, its face a somber mask. Nonetheless, Heathers, trailblazing the debate, is almost too groundbreaking to make its points effectively, or ethically. The titular bullies, cartoon characters that they are, are almost too unforgettably quotable for their acidity not to soak into generations of wannabe popular kids too self-servingly cruel to get the satire (now doubly reinforced by a generation reared on Tina Fey's Mean Girls, which owes a massive debt to Heathers' snark, but pointedly inserted a hefty 'moral of the story' third act as a get- out-of-jail-free card, the likes of which are unseen here). Then there's Christian Slater's (aptly named) J.D. - a remix of Dean and baby-Nicholson too impossibly slick and cool not to cement his nihilistic ideology into the hearts of a disenfranchised generation... which gets problematic when his sliminess, subtle multiplicities of abuse, escalating serial killing, and cheerfully detailed attempt to bomb the school don't quite stick in our bad books the way they're meant to. Check the film's poster - a cutesy, wholesome, quirky romance for the whole family this ain't. It's a cruelly ironic and perplexingly glib outcome for a film that so intelligently unpacks the rationale of copycat suicides, particularly amidst the aforementioned epidemic of school shootings. But, as Veronica's blistering journal gradually comes to terms with, we - each individual one of us, and culture as a whole - are all ultimately more to blame than we'd ever like to be. Better come to terms with it. Life's very much worth living, but it still... sucks. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of Veronica's slide from toxic, abusive friend group to toxic, (differently) abusive relationship to taking agency of her own social standing is less attributable to the film's screenplay, and more chalked up to Winona Ryder's doggedly charismatic performance. Articulate, ballsy, unbearably cool and pungently endearing, Ryder is a rock of reason in a revolving maelstrom of nonsense (and if anything perfectly captures the essence of high school, it's this). Pair this with the triple-threat of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, and it's no wonder her 'eccentric cynic with a heart' archetype almost singularly carved out the voice (and middle finger) of Generation-X angst. Still, we should really talk about that monocle, though...Sauntering into the cultural unconsciousness like a snappy, hip, and truthful John Hughes movie stubbing out its cigarette on the school flag, Heathers' social politics may not always be quite as razor-sharp as its witticisms, but it's unquestionably more big-hearted than black hearted, even as the bodies hit the floor. Whether spawning spin off off-Broadway musicals, reminding viewers that pre-Mean Girls teen movies had teeth, or shocking generations anew with its funny, scary, omnipotence, Heathers' cultural power and presence continues to thwack us like a croquet ball to the collective forehead. In short, it's very... very.-8/10