R, 1 hr. 42 min. Directed By:
Michael Lehmann. Release Date:
Jun 1, 1988. DVD Release
Date: Mar 30, 1999.
There
are occasionally moments in movies where I laugh and I know I shouldn’t:
the one scene that I reference most often in this blog is the scene from Pulp
Fiction where John Travolta accidentally shoots the guy he has held at
gunpoint in the back seat of a moving vehicle as it hits a speed bump.
There are lots of others, although few are coming to mind right now.
The
ones that are immediately coming to my attention are all from Heathers.
In many ways, the movie defines the dark comedy genre and has earned its role
as a 80s cult classic. I’m not sure why it came to the attention of so
many professional critics, because there isn’t much I find to be really
redeeming about it, although I do find it nine kinds of entertaining.
It’s
been… more than a decade since I watched this movie the first time, and now, I
think the cast is a little dated. Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, and
Shannen Dougherty (who is STILL riding the coattails of her increasingly faded 90210
fame) smack so much of the time that it’s hard for me to take the movie all
that seriously. Of the three, only one deserved the fame she acquired,
and for me, that’s Winona Ryder. Sure, she’s evolved into a crazy lady
that steals Estee Lauder perfumes from her local Woolworth, but back then she
had some very good roles under her belt. I’ve never liked Christian
Slater. The only movies that he’s been involved with where I’ve not
really hated his presence were Heathers and Robin Hood: Prince of
Thieves. Oh, I guess I didn’t hate him in Interview With the
Vampire, but in my defense, he was only in it for like four scenes, and then Tom
Cruise eats him, so it’s all good.
But
really, there are a lot of reasons in this movie not to laugh, and I always
feel a little bad that I laugh myself silly every time I see this movie:
just about everything involving Martha Dumptruck (I can never remember her real
last name) is horrible, and I laugh. I laugh when they set up Rom and
that other football player in the woods. I laugh when the first Heather
goes face first into the coffee table. I actually laugh a lot at that
scene. I can laugh when we see Winona Ryder smoke, when she drinks, when
she rolls into the sack with Slater at first meeting, and when she calls her
dad an idiot. I’d kill my child for any one of those
infractions, and I’m laughing at her for doing it.
Somewhere,
karma is laughing at me. This is one of the many reasons why I’m leery of
the idea of cursing the world with my spawn.
Despite
all that, I’d recommend this movie in a heartbeat. It is funny, even if
you should say a few Hail Marys for every bit of laughter, and quite frankly, I
loved the 80s as much, if not more, than I loved the 90s, and Heathers
represents a wonderful regression to those happy days. If you haven't seen it yet, you should.
