By Michael Lehmann, 1989.
Starring Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Kim Walker.
Rating: 10/10, 8/10.
I often feel like I lived the first fifteen or so years of my life in an entirely different world than anyone else did, including the people I remember knowing then. I saw entirely different movies, watched (almost) entirely different TV, and listened to entirely different music, with the exception that Salt n Pepa figure strongly in my childhood memories—but even that is different, since the song I remember is Let’s Talk About Sex, not Shoop.
But I digress. My point is that even though I was born in 1982 and therefore come from a group of people who were only seven (rather than the more appropriate fifteen or sixteen) when Heathers came out, pretty much everyone I know has prominent childhood memories of the movie, whereas I saw it for the first time just a few months ago, when I was already twenty years old.
I can’t decide if that’s good or bad. I loved Heathers, loved it to pieces, tiny, itty bitty, beautiful pieces, and so a part of me is inclined to think that my pre-Heathers life was wasted, if only in some small way. But, and I don’t intend to tootle my own horn here, I think that I’m significantly more mature now than I was at the age that most of my generation saw the movie, and I think that helps. If watching Heathers now was, for me, a semi-nostalgic exercise, bound up in memories of childhood and such, I don’t know if it would be as good. As it is, I approach it as just a movie, and it knocks all seventeen of my socks off.
What can be said about Heathers? It’s a steaming pile of genius about high school, about social rules, about murder and suicide. It’s evil, it’s surreal, it’s hilarious. I kind of think it’s its own review; since it’s required viewing for anyone, as far as I’m concerned, you can decide for yourself if you like it or if you’re a moron.
PS: Winona Ryder’s character writing in her diary is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.