Though the music-driven youth comedy had existed for decades prior to 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in many respects Amy Heckerling’s film feels like the foundation of the American teen comedy as we know it today. Adapted by screenwriter Cameron Crowe from his 1981 true-life account of posing as a high school student when he was 22, the film is as shockingly frank about matters of youthful indiscretion as vulgarian hits like Animal House, but it crucially approaches matters of sex and the coming-of-age search for identity with tenderness and empathy. Some, maybe even most, of the film’s characters are selfish and inconsiderate, but there are no villains here, and even the most humiliating spectacles on display are handled with an assurance that these are the awkward, soon-forgotten stumbling blocks of adolescence.
Structured loosely around a network of interrelated characters, Fast Times at Ridgemont High by and large transitions seamlessly between its subplots, from, say, erstwhile popular kid Brad’s (Judge Reinhold) slow descent down the ladder of demeaning service jobs to his younger sister Stacy’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) budding sexual forays. Other connections are more tenuous but nonetheless effective, like the demolished car that links the school’s football star, Charles (Forest Whitaker), to burnout surfer Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn). Despite the film’s lean running time, its subplots intersect with surprising density, capturing a range of relatable experiences, from dealing with hard-ass teachers, like Ray Walston’s crusty Mr. Hand, to the pressures of entry into the realm of dating and sex.
Perhaps the film’s greatest insight, and one that would define other masterful ’80s teen movies as diverse as Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk and Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties, is the extent to which young adults during a consumerist boom time substituted their lack of life experience and self-awareness by presenting personalities shaped by popular culture. All of the film’s major characters have a distinct way of dressing that instantly reveals their true personalities, and they pay for the accoutrements that define them with jobs in the mall where they spend their wages in a sort of “Möbius strip” economy. No matter the characters’ style, the one thing that links jock, nerd, and good girl alike is the shared, overwhelming fear that someone, somewhere, may get a glimpse at their real, unimpressive selves.
That paranoia grounds what could easily have been harrowing and exploitative moments, like when the smooth-talking ticket scalper Damone (Robert Romanus) is revealed to be a skittish, premature-ejaculating virgin after he ends up with Stacy. His visible insecurity adds context and a degree of empathy to his subsequent freak-out and cowardice when this embarrassing tryst results in Stacy getting pregnant. But Damone’s fuck-and-run skittishness is merely the most visible example of a character’s crumbling façade in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Phoebe Cates’s Linda lives on in the hearts and minds (and other parts) of Generation X, but there are numerous intimations that the girl’s worldlier sexual experience is at least partially embellished as much to shore up her own frustrations as to impress Stacy, her best friend.
Both Heckerling and Crowe would go on to make other teen classics, from Crowe’s equally tender Say Anything… and Almost Famous to Heckerling’s iconic Valley Girl spin on Jane Austen’s Emma, Clueless. But Fast Times at Ridgemont High lives on as a high-water mark in both their filmographies, in no small part for the way it infuses the typically tossed-off construction of the teen comedy with a real feel for fading adolescence, even while wallowing in the playful immaturity of its characters. Though not blind to the occasionally harrowing pitfalls of youth, the film remains optimistic in its sense that high school isn’t the best time of our lives, but rather the time when one is most free to make mistakes.
Image/Sound
Fast Times at Ridgemont High lands on the Criterion Collection with a controversial 4K transfer, with such a furor kicked up over its deviations from Universal’s prior release that Criterion felt compelled to issue a statement defending their work. But Universal’s disc is the flawed one, given the visible noise reduction and over-boosted colors that rendered contrast aggressively unbalanced and details waxy. This new transfer boasts more natural flesh tones, richer colors, healthier film grain, and considerably more detail. Zoom and cropping errors have also been corrected, resulting in noticeable frame shifts but ones that are more accurate to the film’s actual framing. This is a dramatic improvement over all previous home-video releases of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and only a full-on UHD release of this transfer could offer any additional boost in quality. Curiously, the only audio option is 5.1 surround mix created years ago from the film’s original mono. The channel separation is subtle, largely using the surround space to further boost the volume of the soundtrack’s blaring rock, while dialogue is always centered and never drowned out by crowd noise or music.
Extras
Most of the extras here have been sourced from prior home-video releases, from the 1999 documentary featuring interviews with many cast and crew members to the commentary track by Amy Heckerling and Cameron Crowe on which they detail their vision of the material. Both extras abound in copious information about how the film was cast and shot, as well as a great deal of wistful reminiscence about how it lives on as a genre touchstone. Audio from Heckerling speaking at her alma mater, the American Film Institute, around the time of the film’s premiere is also included. Most notable for pure ’80s nostalgists is a cut of the TV version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, naturally shorn of graphic language and nudity. The only new extras consist of an interview with Heckerling and Crowe moderated by Olivia Wilde that covers much of the same ground as the commentary track and a booklet with a brief intro by Crowe and an essay by critic Dana Stevens, who mixes her memories of obsessing over the film as a teen with reflections on both its lasting aesthetic and observational value and how those virtues contrast with the hostile contemporary reviews that the film has received.
Overall
Amy Heckerling sardonic but empathetic film remains a high-water mark in the pantheon of teen films, and, barring a UHD release, it’s unlikely to ever look better than it does on the Criterion Collection’s superlative package.
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