Michael Fuchs
So it's a cult movie that seems to strike a nerve with everyone having gone to an American high school. Not being American, I have some trouble relating to the characters, even taking into account their obvious caricature. There are some bumpy p(l)ot holes along the way, like Heather number one gulping down the drink without even sniffing it just because she was 'dared', the second footballer/victim running directly back to where he knows the first one was killed (even as brainless as he is, that's a reach), J.D. speaking out loud (not even psychopaths regularly do that unless is furthers the story) to a faceless hanged Veronica so obviously not hanging from her neck, Veronica turning up at school without a plan or an attempt to warn the other people, randomly looking for J.D. who could be blowing up the school at every moment. Just because it's satire doesn't mean you should just give a free pass to every terribly constructed story turn.I like both lead actors, had a crush on Winona Ryder like every teenage boy with eyes in the nineties. But even though there is gushing praise for their acting in many people's reviews here, my experience was different. Making a caricature out of a character is easy, playing the caricature in a believable way is hard. I didn't feel they were able to pull the latter off.The 6/10 is a measure of enjoying the challenge the movie presents, to homicide and suicide portrayal ethics, to your ability to digest the first unexpected murder, to rule violations in general like the compassionate protagonist clinically witnessing her former boyfriend's gory suicide.The movie is different, unconstrained and is bound to tumble around in your thoughts for a while.
pyrocitor
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
