The film is a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma. The plot centers on a beautiful, popular, wealthy high school student who wants to do "good deeds." She befriends a newcomer and decides to give her a makeover while playing matchmaker for her teachers and examining her own existence.
Clueless was filmed in Southern California over a 40-day schedule. Heckerling studied Beverly Hills High School students to understand how teenagers in the 1990s talked and learned some appropriate slang terms from them.
The film grossed $88 million worldwide, and was further successful in the home video market.[4] It has received positive reviews from critics and is considered to be one of the best teen films of all time.[5][6][7][8]Clueless has developed a cult following and has a continuing legacy. The film was followed by a spin-off television sitcom and series of books.
Plot
Cher Horowitz is a stylish, popular, and good-natured teenager living in a Beverly Hills mansion with her wealthy father, Mel, a gruff litigator; her mother died during a liposuction procedure when Cher was a baby. She attends Bronson Alcott High School with her best friend Dionne Davenport, who is also beautiful and from a wealthy family. Dionne has a long-term relationship with popular student Murray Duvall, though Cher believes she should be dating more mature men.
Josh Lucas, the socially conscious son of Mel's ex-wife of only a few weeks, visits Cher and her father during a break from college. She playfully mocks his idealism while he teases her for her vanity, superficiality, and selfishness.
After receiving a poor grade, Cher decides to orchestrate a romance between two teachers at her school, Miss Geist and the hard-grading Mr. Hall. As a result, Hall relaxes his standards, allowing Cher to renegotiate the grade. After seeing their newfound happiness, she realizes she enjoys doing good deeds.
When a "clueless" transfer student named Tai Frasier arrives at the school, Cher decides to make her her next project. She gives her a makeover with the help of Dionne, providing Tai with confidence and a sense of style. Cher tries to extinguish the attraction between her and Travis Birkenstock, an amiable but clumsy skateboarding slacker, and instead steers Tai towards handsome, popular student Elton Tiscia.
However, Elton has no interest in Tai and is instead interested in Cher. She only realizes this when he tries to kiss her in his car after a party in Sun Valley. When she rebuffs him, he leaves her in a parking lot out of spite, and she is mugged at gunpoint. With no money, her only choice is to call Josh to pick her up. He realizes that despite her superficiality, she is sincere. She begins to enjoy staying home with him, and they begin to bond.
Fashion-conscious new student Christian Stovitz attracts Cher's attention and becomes her target for a boyfriend. When she goes to a party with him, Josh becomes protective and decides to follow her to the party. She invites Christian to her home and tries to seduce him, but he deflects her advances, only later realizing that Christian is gay. Despite the failure of her romantic overtures, Cher remains friends with Christian due to her admiration of his taste in art and fashion.
Cher's privileged life takes a negative turn when Tai's newfound popularity strains their relationship and when she fails her driving test and, for the first time, cannot change the result. Returning home in a depressed mood, Tai confesses to Cher that she has feelings for Josh and asks her for help in pursuing him. Cher tells Tai that she is not right for Josh, leading to the two girls falling out.
Feeling "totally clueless," Cher reflects on her priorities and repeated failures to understand or appreciate the people in her life. After thinking about why she is bothered by Tai's romantic interest in Josh, Cher finally realizes that she is in love with him.
In response to her epiphany, Cher begins making awkward but sincere efforts to live a more purposeful life, including captaining the school's Pismo Beach disaster relief effort. She accepts an invitation from Travis to a skating tournament in Long Beach, where she reconciles with Tai.
Cher and Josh eventually realize their feelings for one another, culminating in a kiss. Ultimately, her friendships with Tai and Dionne are solidified. Sometime later, Mr. Hall and Miss Geist get married, and Cher attends the wedding with Josh, Dionne, Murray, and Tai and Travis (who have begun dating). Cher catches the wedding bouquet, and she and Josh embrace and kiss.
The idea for Clueless first originated as a television pilot in 1993.[9][10][11] Writer and director Amy Heckerling said: "Twentieth Century Fox said they wanted a show about teenagers—but not the nerds. They wanted it to be about the cool kids. The most successful character in anything I'd ever done was Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times. People think that's because he was stoned and a surfer. But that's not it. It's because he's positive. So I thought, 'I'm going to write a character who's positive and happy.' And that was Cher."[10] Heckerling, having read the Jane Austen novel Emma in college and loving the title character's positivity, decided to write the script around an Emma-like character, saying, "I started to think, 'What's the larger context for that kind of a 'nothing can go wrong' 'always looks through rose colored glasses' kind of girl? So I tried to take all the things that were in this sort of pretty 1800s world and see what would that be like if it was in Beverly Hills."[9]
"I remembered reading Emma in college and being struck at how much it reminded me of old TV shows like Gidget. There's something so basic about it. I knew [Clueless] would be set in Beverly Hills because it's a hyper-pastel fantasy place."
As research for the script, Heckerling sat in on classes at Beverly Hills High School to get a feel for the student culture,[12] commenting, "...one thing I observed was these girls in a constant state of grooming."[10] Ken Stovitz had become Heckerling's agent at the time and told her the script had the potential to be a feature film after he read it.[11] The finished script, which was titled "No Worries", contained the main characters that would end up in the Clueless film.[11]Twink Caplan, Heckerling's friend who had worked with her on past projects, said film executives at Fox were wary of the story being too female-oriented to appeal to a large enough audience. "It was obvious they didn't get it. They thought the script needed more boys in it. They were afraid that if they focused on girls, we wouldn't get any guys to see it. So it went into turnaround. It was dead", said Caplan.[10]
Six months later, the script found its way to producer Scott Rudin, who gave it his stamp of approval.[9][10] Rudin's support led to increased interest in the script, and it became the subject of a bidding war between studios which was eventually won by Paramount Pictures.[9] Heckerling was excited, as Paramount owned several major youth-centered TV channels, such as MTV and Nickelodeon, which were suited to the film's target demographic.[9]
The character of Wendell Hall, played by Wallace Shawn, was inspired by a real-life debate teacher at Beverly Hills High School and a friend of Heckerling's. Prior to full-time acting, Shawn had been a teacher and drew on his experience for his portrayal of Mr. Hall.[12]
Principal photography for the film began on November 21, 1994,[15] and consisted of a 40-day filming schedule.[16]Brittany Murphy, who was 17 at the time, required a parent or guardian present during filming.[17]
Scenes depicting the fictional Bronson Alcott High School campus including the tennis courts, outdoor cafeteria, and the quad were filmed at Occidental College in Los Angeles.[18] Ulysses S. Grant High School in Valley Glen provided filming locations for the school's interior sets.[19] Other notable filming locations include the former Westside Pavilionshopping mall, Circus Liquor in North Hollywood, where Cher is mugged in her designer dress, and Rodeo Drive, featured in Cher's "crisis" scene as she dejectedly wanders around after a failed driver's test and a confrontation with Tai.[19]
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones performance, originally an outdoor event, had to be moved inside due to rain.[17]Paul Rudd bought everyone gifts after filming wrapped.[20]
Costumes
Mona May did the costume designing for the film. The iconic plaid set worn by Cher Horowitz in the film was "a nod to a Catholic schoolgirl uniform, but taken to another level and, turned designer."[21] Cher wore several designer clothes ranging from Azzedine Alaïa to Anna Sui.[22] The "underwear" Calvin Klein dress worn by Cher was actually designed by Sui who, at the time, was an emerging designer.[22] Calvin Klein was credited due to more brand recognition during the time.
Release
Box office
The film became a surprise sleeper hit of 1995.[23]Clueless opened in 1,653 theaters on July 19, 1995, and grossed $10,612,443 on its opening weekend, which led to a ranking of second at the US box office behind Apollo 13.[24] The film grossed $56,631,572 during its theatrical run in the United States and Canada, becoming the 32nd-highest-grossing film of 1995.[25] Internationally, it grossed $31 million for a worldwide total of $88 million.[3] The box office success brought the then-largely unknown Silverstone to international attention and earned her a $10 million, multi-picture deal with Columbia TriStar.[26] The film developed a strong cult following after its release.[6][27]
Critical reception
The film was well received by critics. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 81% based on reviews from 120 critics, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A funny and clever reshaping of Emma, Clueless offers a soft satire that pokes as much fun at teen films as it does at the Beverly Hills glitterati."[28] On Metacritic, the film has a 68 out of 100 rating based on 18 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".[29] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[30]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars.[31]Janet Maslin of The New York Times noted, "Even if Clueless runs out of gas before it's over, most of it is as eye-catching and cheery as its star."[32]Peter Travers of Rolling Stone contrasted the film to a more adult-oriented movie about teenagers released around the same time, Kids, stating, "The materialism in Clueless is almost as scary as the hopelessness in Kids", but concluded Clueless is "wicked good fun to be had [and] Silverstone is a winner."[33]
In 2008, Entertainment Weekly selected Clueless as one of the "New Classics", a list of 100 best films released between 1983 and 2008;[39]Clueless was ranked 42nd.[39] That year, the publication also named it the 19th-best comedy of the past 25 years.[40] The film is ranked as number 7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 best high school films.[41]
Comparison to Emma
Clueless is a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma, and many of its characters have counterparts in the novel.[42][43][44]
Cher Horowitz/Emma Woodhouse: Cher is representative of the main character Emma Woodhouse. Spunky, carefree, entitled, perpetually single, and matchmaker extraordinaire, both Cher and Emma enjoy the satisfaction of helping those who are without love find a perfect match. This is first seen within the first fifteen minutes of the film when both she and Dionne pair their English teacher with the school's Debate teacher. However, this is more prominently reflected when Cher does everything in her power to pair her newest friend Tai. While both Emma and Cher mean well in their matchmaking attempts, neither of them realizes the depths of her actions nor her feelings towards Josh/Mr. Knightley until Tai/Harriet asks her to set her up with Josh/Mr. Knightley.
Josh Lucas/Mr. Knightley: Cher's former stepbrother, whom she finds utterly repulsive. At the beginning of the movie, she states that she has no positive feelings towards Josh in the slightest. The two bicker continually. However, as the movie progresses, Josh is shown to be more caring and considerate towards Cher, becoming defensive towards her choices of men and in life. In the novel, Mr. Knightley is the brother of Emma's sister's husband and is Emma's only critic. Cher/Emma and Josh/Mr. Knightley eventually realize they are in love.
Tai Frasier/Harriet Smith: Tai, representative of the young, fair, and socially awkward Harriet Smith, is a newcomer to Bronson Alcott High School. Soon after, she is swept off her feet by both Cher and Dionne as they help her (unintentionally) become the most popular girl in school, to Cher's dismay. At the beginning of the film, Tai is attracted to Travis, a well-meaning, skateboard-riding, pot-smoking social recluse. Harriet is likewise attracted to humble farmer Robert Martin. Each is pressured by Cher/Emma to reject her lower-status potential lover, instead being pushed towards Elton/Mr Elton. Disastrously for Cher, Tai then falls for Josh. Emma is likewise horrified when Harriet falls in love with Mr. Knightley. In both cases, this leads to the heroine examining her own true feelings.
Mel Horowitz/Mr. Henry Woodhouse: Similarly to Emma, Mr. Horowitz is a well known and respected man within his circle of friends, though there is one major difference between both characters: while Mr. Horowitz is shown to have little to no care for his health, Mr. Woodhouse is considered to be a valetudinarian. Both characters are shown to love their daughters greatly while not always being so forward in their affection.
Christian Stovitz/Frank Churchill: The initially appealing love interest of Cher, whom she convinces herself she must be in love with, similar to Frank Churchill in the book. In the book, Churchill is not available to Emma because he is secretly already engaged; in the film, Christian is not available to Cher because he is gay. Both characters engage in surface-level flirting with the heroine and make her consider her own feelings.
Travis Birkenstock/Robert Martin: A stoner and skater who has a mutual attraction with Tai; however, their attempts at courtship are derailed for a time by Cher's attempt to set Tai up with Elton. Travis is an underachiever, is constantly late for class and often receives poor grades. In the book, Emma considers Martin, a farmer, to be beneath Harriet.
Elton Tiscia/Mr. Elton: Elton is a popular student whom Cher attempts to fix up with Tai. As is the case with the Elton from the book, he is not interested in Tai/Harriet and mistakenly believes that Cher/Emma is interested in him.
Amber Mariens/Mrs. Elton: Cher's antagonist, who is implied to be dating Elton after Cher turns down his advance, similar to Mr. Elton taking a wife after Emma rejects him.
Miss Geist/Miss Taylor and Mr. Hall/Mr. Weston: The initial targets of Cher's/Emma's matchmaking.
Home media
Clueless was released on VHS and LaserDisc on December 19, 1995, by Paramount Home Video. It ended up in the top 20 for both video rental and video sales for 1996 in the United States.[45] It was released on DVD on October 19, 1999. The special features solely included two theatrical trailers.
The film was reissued in a special 10th-anniversary "Whatever! Edition" DVD on August 30, 2005.[46] The new issue included featurettes and cast interviews, including:The Class of '95 (a look at the cast), Creative Writing (Amy Heckerling talks about the script), Fashion 101 (how filmmakers invented the trendsetting style of Clueless), Language Arts (the director and cast members give facts on the groundbreaking slang and how Clueless revived Valspeak slang), Suck and Blow (how to play the game depicted in the Sun Valley party scene), Driver's Ed, We're History (stories from cast and crew of Clueless), and two theatrical trailers.
It was released on Blu-ray on May 1, 2012.[47] Special features from the "Whatever! Edition" of 2005 were carried over to the Blu-ray and included a new trivia track.
After the death of Brittany Murphy, Silverstone stated that she "always felt connected to [Murphy] as [they] shared a very special experience in [their] lives together",[49] and said, "I loved working with Brittany. She was so talented, so warm, and so sweet."[49]
Heckerling later described Silverstone as having "that Marilyn Monroe thing" as a "pretty, sweet blonde who, in spite of being the American ideal, people still really like."[26]
Heckerling later reunited with both Silverstone and Wallace Shawn for the 2012 vampire comedy film Vamps.[26]
Popular culture and society
The film was well known for the characters' catchphrases and vocabulary. Cher's verbal style is also marked by ironic contrasts between current slang and historical references, such as when she compares Tai to "those Botticelli chicks".[52]
The film also had a strong influence on fashion trends.[53][54] Fashion as a form of self-expression played an important role in the narrative and character development of the film, television series, and novels, which are topics examined by academic Alice Leppert.[55]
Clueless was the main inspiration for Australian rapper Iggy Azalea's music video for her 2014 song "Fancy" featuring Charli XCX. Many visuals and costumes inspired by the film were used in the video,[57] which is filled with remakes of Clueless scenes. The outfits are also reinvented to channel the famous stylings of the film with a slightly modern edge.[58] "Fancy" was shot in the same Los Angeles high school where Clueless was filmed.[59] A June 2018 episode of Lip Sync Battle featured Silverstone miming to "Fancy", wearing Cher's yellow plaid skirt suit.[60]
A reference to Cher's seduction of Christian is included in the music video for Simone Battle's "He Likes Boys" (2011).[61][62]
In the second episode of the second season of the BBC America thriller series Killing Eve, "Nice and Neat" (2019), the Russian assassin Villanelle calls her agency and uses the codename Cher Horowitz to secretly inform her boss she is in trouble and needs to be rescued after being kidnapped.[63]
A 2020 Discover Card commercial featured a clip from the film consisting of Cher Horowitz saying her famous phrase "Uh! As if!".[64]
In 2023, Silverstone once again reprised the role of Cher Horowitz in a commercial for Rakuten which debuted during Super Bowl LVII.[65]
Spin-offs and adaptations
Television
In 1996, the producers created a spin-off television series, which followed parallel storylines of Cher and her friends. Several cast members from the film went on to star in the series, with the notable exceptions of Silverstone and Rudd, whose film careers had begun to take off. Silverstone was replaced in the series with actress Rachel Blanchard.
In October 2019, it was announced that CBS would be adapting the film into a drama series. The series is said to be centered around Dionne Davenport after Cher goes missing, and is described by Deadline Hollywood as a "baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sunglasses-wearing, oat milk latte and Adderall-fueled look at what happens when the high school queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong number two Dionne steps into Cher's vacant Air Jordans."[66] On August 14, 2020, it was moved to NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock.[67] In May 2021, it was reported that the series would not be moving forward at Peacock and instead would be redeveloping at CBS Studios.[68]
In 2015, to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary, pop culture writer Jen Chaney published a book titled As If!: The Oral History of Clueless. The book is based on exclusive interviews with Heckerling, Silverstone, and other cast and crew members. Excerpts from the book were published in Vanity Fair.[11][70]
Clueless: The Musical opened in New York City on December 11, 2018, as part of The New Group's 2018–2019 season. The show was written by Heckerling and starred Dove Cameron as Cher and Dave Thomas Brown as Josh. It closed on January 12, 2019.[72][73]
The Clueless CD-ROM is an activity and mini game collection based on the Clueless film and television series released by Mattel Media in 1997 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.[74] The CD-ROM is intended for girls age 8 and up, and includes a soundtrack, trivia, makeover and dress-up activities, and six video games.[75]
Paramount announced in 2008 that they would release video games based on their films Clueless, Mean Girls, and Pretty in Pink.[76] The games were planned to be released on both the PC and the Nintendo DS, but only the PC games were released. Clueless on PC was released in 2009.[77] The cancelled Nintendo DS video game was found by YouTuber Ray Mona,[78] and a full play-through of the game was released on her channel on April 1, 2021.[79][80]
In 2017, Episode launched an interactive animated web story based on the film.[81]
^Hopkins, Susan (August–September 2015). "Clueless". Philosophy Now. No. 109. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved December 21, 2015.
