Ah, here's a movie that isn't on the Monday Project movie list, but which surprised me enough to warrant a mention. I've seen Heathers a whole handful of times but probably haven't sat down to watch it in close to 15 years. Funny. In the early-90's, it was regarded as something of an it movie in large part because of Winona Ryder's rising star but just as much because of the derisive subject matter. Now it's relegated to a Wal-Mart dump bin for just $5. (Which is where I picked it up, value shoppers!)
Now I'm going to embarrass myself by labelling it a sort of near-classic. Time has been very, very good to Heathers. Sweet Jesus, the high hair and glam fashions are still shocking and the black subject matter feels like it was past its exiry date by 1991; however the movie as a piece of pulp entertainment has held up remarkably well. There's something special built into the movie that makes a time-trip backwards worth the 103 minutes and $5.Here's one reason why.
No surprise to anyone who grew up in the 80's that one of premier teen genres in theatres was the high school comedy. John Hughes mastered the art of geek chic and elevated it to the upper stratosphere with his comedies, all of which were sharp and sweet-hearted things revolving around the underdog class (who couldn't identify?) High school sucked, but you were in it for your friends and the girls and the parties. The key was to stick together. Not such a bad thing really. Heathers, on the other hand, represents the dark side to this kind of teen comedy: it is in every way the anti-Hughes flick. With its black, black heart and its contempt for virtually everyone in the high school universe, Heathers is the cartoon satire that forever loathes high school. There is nothing here worth sentimentalizing. As much as the John Hughes films may be comfort food to the 80's class, Heathers is the high school experience you don't want to remember; there's no friends worth counting on, there's no loyalty; there's only sarcasm and ugliness. I simply didn't remember how cynical and mean-spirited this movie was.
More shocking now is to watch Heathers in a post-Columbine world and to consider that this is a movie that would never, and could never get made today. With teen violence forever dominating newspaper headlines, it seems almost blissfully inflammatory to watch Christian Slater's JD character draw a gun and fire blank rounds at classmates in a high school cafeteria. Or to watch the character hatch a bomb plot that will kill everyone in the school: um...whoa. A movie with this subject matter today would be regarded as irresponsible and certainly disrespectful; however it's easy to forget that just 20 years ago, violence like this could still be taken lightly and people could be entertained by cartoon high school psycho-killers. Ah, the good ol' days.
Still, it's a shame that the movie doesn't hold it together long enough to be a geniune classic. It's true that the movie falls apart in the last half as the emphasis shifts from snarky high school games to murder-mayhem and suicide politics. In particular, that final plot by JD to blow up the school seems like the climax of a script that got out of hand; after all, this isn't really what makes Heathers work. The violence and murder is an intriguing artifact, but what makes Heathers worth the revisit is the spiteful attitude and corrosive banter. It's a shame; I still lose interest in the movie at about the 2/3 mark.
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