Rating of
2.5/4
"Heathers" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 01/25/12
Winona Ryder is part of the most popular and bitchy clique in Westerberg High School, until she meets charismatic psycho Christian Slater who inspires her "teen angst bullshit" to have a bodycount. By the end of the 1980s, there began a severe backlash against the empty, self-centred attitude of that particular decade spearheaded by bands such as Nirvana and Public Enemy and culminating in Douglas Coupland's Generation X, which pronounced a new cynicism for a society built on self serving greed and obsession with vacuous superficiality. Heathers was very much part of this movement and was like a breath of fresh air upon its release. A parody of 80s teen movies and a biting social satire on society's obsession with looks and popularity, it contained a new kind of well observed and dark wit missing from mainstream comedy at the time. Slater does his best Jack Nicholson impersonation as the murderous High School rebel and Winona Ryder displays her usual left field quirkiness that's so appealing, but the real star is the dialogue that contains a host of brilliantly quotable lines. Unfortunately it loses momentum towards the end as the script tries to tie up the plot in an unconvincing finale and the laughs get fewer and farther between, but it's also a cinematic time capsule of an important shift in the attitudes of the popular culture of the time. And the first hour is still pure genius!
