IslandGuru Who payed the critics

TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

MisterWhiplash I watched little bits of this before, because it's impossible to be aware of pop culture and not see some of it (ie I Love the 80s on VH1 years back couldn't help but show scenes from this, or just flipping channels on cable), but never from start to finish. Thats over tonight. And damn if this doesn't have enough charm to charge up a mall during a holiday season. The entire cast is game and having a great time, and Heckerling is able to tap into that in such a way that shows how sleazy other teen comedies of the period were; it follows the Truffaut maxim of only wanting to see the joy or pain in making a film in the former sense. But I also think Ray Walston doesn't get quite enough credit here. Of course he's the old man in the cast, literally, since the bulk of them are "kids" relatively. As I watch Walston though, he finds the perfectly droll, bemused attitude to take when up against the students ("What are you people? On DOPE?") and with Spicoli, who was the totally-method Sean Penn. I'm not sure if I saw the movie when I was much younger if he would be be as appealing; now in my 30s, I found him to be one of the funniest things in the whole thing.Jennifer Jason Leigh looks... So young. Which makes how her story turn out so wildly interesting and I love love LOVE how (spoiler) she deals with abortion as just another plot point. I cant think of other teen movies that would do that today, not to mention from a gaze that if it isn't identifiable female then it's certainly not male (take the scene where JJL loses loses her virginity and keeps looking at the scenery, is "Surf Nazis"). It's a remarkable performance among remarkable and alive performances, all tapping in to the mood of the thing: high school is lame, but this guy or chick is cool! This really is one of the most influential movies of the past 40 years isn't it? Not necessarily *best*, but its commitment to anthropology - yes, anthropology - for the world of high school at this time is spellbinding. At the leasts its value is inestimable for giving us Freaks and Geeks.

dworldeater The 80's had a lot of great teen movies, in my opinion Fast Times In Ridgemont High is one of the best. Sex, drugs and rock n'roll(but mostly the sex) are the prevalent themes for the film. While the movie is hilarious, there are some pretty serious situations that the film takes on(minors having sex with adults, abortion,armed robbery,etc). The tone is mostly light, but very effective when there are serious situations. The cast is excellent and a lot of them went on to have success in the film industry. It should be no surprise that Sean Penn went on to become a big star as he steals the show with his iconic performance of surfer stoner dude Spicolli. Also we get awesome early performances from Judge Reinhold and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz and Nicolas Cage also appear and lets not forget about major 80's babe Phoebe Cates, who really shines in the pool scene. This is pretty accurate and authentic film about life in high school for teens in the early 80's. Fast Times.. really holds up and is one of the best movies of the teen comedy/drama genre.

RavenGlamDVDCollector This is the movie made famous by the bikini sequence carried out so talentfully by Phoebe Cates, shortly after she starred in the controversial nudity-filled movie PARADISE. It also features some intimate scenes with a very young Jennifer Jason Leigh at the beginning of her career. On the extras of the DVD, she mentions that though they were controversial, she felt that they were more realistic, spoke more to real-life average people, than Brooke Shields' highly glamorous scenes in THE BLUE LAGOON and ENDLESS LOVE, which she felt were just too pretty. Yeah, Jennifer's really cute, and lots of girls would be able to relate to that supremely inglorious botched sex scene.Phoebe Cates is an unforgettable standout in the annals of movie eroticism. It would take much more to create an iconic scene nowadays than merely filling out a red bikin (and then going topless) but back in 1982, she made bikini history indelibly locked into the minds of the young generation of that time.Without the red bikini sequence, my score would have been considerably lower, as I do not find neither the movie nor most of the characters particularly entertaining. Amy Heckerling did much better with CLUELESS, which ranks as one of my personal favorites.Let me just add that the insane song at the end "Goodbye, Goodbye" by Oinka Boinka or something goofy like that, is so atrociously bad, so maddeningly irritating, that if I could break the original and thereby wipe it from recording history, no matter how I would be chastised for it, I'd stomp on the damn thing.

LessThanPadraig This is the kind of movie that makes me regret not growing up during the 1980s. Truly, it was a decade I wish I'd experienced. I love this movie, I can't really explain why, I just do. It gives me a sense of nostalgia, even though I wasn't born until the 1990s, so I don't quite know why, perhaps its nostalgia for a better era of 'coming of age' films or perhaps it's not nostalgia at all but rather a feeling that I can't explain.I've heard some people say it's not acted well. Well, it may not be the highest calibre but that doesn't take very much away from the unique plot of so many stories running into one another. You learn to feel for the characters, sympathise with some while laughing at others (anyone who has watched this will know which characters I'm referring to here). No, it isn't a dramatic masterpiece, but it's not lazy. It's easy watching and is a great underrated ambassador for an interesting decade.P.S. I had no idea that this is where 'Staceys Mom' comes from. Another aspect that links back to my nostalgic youth.