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Heathers (THX Version) Customer Reviews (22 - 24 of 43 Reviews)

Wildly funny
If there's a blacker black comedy than this, I don't know it. Set in an Ohio high school, the theme of the movie is about popularity and acceptance. Three totally bitchy girls named Heather make life miserable for their underlings, until another girl, Veronica (Winona Ryder), can't stand it anymore and wishes they were dead. Along comes J.D. (Christian Slater), a psychotic delinquent, who helps make her wish come true. Some of the dialogue is absolutely terrific and everything, from parents to teachers to jocks and everything inbetween, is sent up with a vicious humor. Only the last 30 minutes drag and tries to deliver a "message" and where the bashing should be rolling along to a grand finale, it sort of fizzles (even though it ends with J.D. blowing himself up). A very funny movie, though, and definitely worth a watch.

For all the Heathers AND the freaks and geeks
I didn't have a great sense of humor in high school so I probably wouldn't have appreciated HEATHERS even if it had hit the theatres in my freshman year. The other night,though, I watched Michael Lehman's film with an open mind. Having read a lot of great reviews for it here on Amazon, I hoped for the best, though I try not to begin a movie with huge expectations.

For the most part HEATHERS did not disappoint me. I'm not a big Christian Slater fan and found his Jack Nicholson imitation distracting at first, but once his character's true nature unraveled, I began to appreciate his warped sense of humor. J.D. is a horrible manipulator and his means to an end (as well as what he wants his end to be) are creepy in our post-Columbine world. But the scary, sad, darkly comic aspects of HEATHERS come from the truths we don't want to hear about our lives and others'. For better or worse, high school IS its own society, full of cliques (some cruel, some kind) and unspoken rules that have harsher penalties than the legal ones.

I like the fact that HEATHERS is uncompromising in its harsh take on high school life and the school administration's patronizing attitude toward the "supposed" suicides. Life is not always according to John Hughes (though he does capture angst nicely in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off.") Even though the frequent use of "fag" bothered me, I got to thinking that perhaps the homophobia was being made fun of as much as anything else in HEATHERS is.

Given our current worried culture and its obsession with "family values," I seriously doubt this movie would be made today. In a way that's a shame because underneath all the violence and discontent, there is actually a positive message in Lehman's film about how lightweight the self-important Heathers of this world actually are in the grand scheme of things. Instead of being swept up in the cyclehood of eternal loser, the Martha "Dumptrucks" of the world come out winners (of sorts.)

After all, as any former (or current) geek can you tell you, life does get better after high school!



Good for a few laughs, but the sparkle's gone...
I first saw 'Heathers' when I was sixteen years old, and it spoke directly to my nihilistic and careless malaise that's at the heart of any good period of teen angst. I loved it.

Now, some years later, I've come back to it with nothing but the fondest of memories, and I find that while it's still the same movie, it hasn't aged at all well.

The basic plot premise consists of Bored Popular Girl (Winona Ryder) meets Edgy Ne'er-Do-Well (Christian Slater) and begins to inadvertently act out her rebellious fantasies of murdering those who cross her. If you could cross 'Degrassi Junior High' with 'Bowling for Columbine' you'd have sort of an idea of what I mean.

The movie is laden with self-conscious performances from its leads, and the supporting cast is a blacker-minded sort of stock eighties teen, but homogenous nonetheless. It's difficult to watch Slater shamelessly plaigarise Jack Nicholson (in that it's not a particularly good impression, nor is it a likeable one), and Winona Ryder does try her best, but she's just not very convincing as a Murderess. It's sort of like watching an Olsen twin trying Shakespeare, but not as literate.

Direction is similarly overstated, it's a post-Molly Ringwald excessiveness that strips away creative ambiguity and spells everything out for the audience - except when the plot devices (Ich Luge bullets and Beaker mix-ups) are so blatantly hokey, this works against the movie, in that we end up wondering how Veronica could have been so stupid in the first place.

But maybe that's not the point - maybe Slater's speech about how her subconscious really wanted to commit murder is the whole point of the story. If that's the case, however, the unsuredness and inexperience of the two leading actors makes for performances with zero depth or subtlety - in short, one-dimensional characters trying (and failing) to give their collective raison d'etre some hidden depths.

It's not all bad news, though. Some of the scenes are amusing to watch (particularly the Homosexual Artifacts one, a curious and almost quaint look back at how attitudes have since changed) and some of the pranks played by the Heathers themselves are still blacker-than-pitch (poor Martha Dumptruck!). All in all, though, 'Heathers' is a movie that hasn't aged well. Be prepared to make major allowances for time and talent if ou choose to watch it again!

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