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Every Teen Movie Wants to Be ‘Clueless’, But Few Are Truly Great
‘Do Revenge’ is Netflix’s new take on the teen movie in the tradition of ‘Clueless’ and ‘Mean Girls’.
When people used to ask me what my favorite movie was, I usually gave them a dishonest answer, wanting to look smarter than I was. Go with a Tarantino or something.
The truth is, my favorite movies of all time are Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Clueless.
The former was the first VHS I watched obsessively as a kid. The latter was the first movie I went to see on my own, with no parental surveillance, at age 10.
It was the first time I went to the movies with the person who would later become my best friend. I have lots of good memories from that movie.
A couple of years later it was on TV, and I recorded it on VHS and watched it obsessively until the tape was nearly broken. Later, I bought the DVD. I’m a real fan. I had to grow up to actually understand many of the jokes referring to sex or smoking pot in the movie, but it didn’t matter.
Clueless was magic. It was escapist, and fun, and it set the bar for teen girl movies to come.
Its protagonist Cher Horowitz (played by the eternally lovely Alicia Silverstone) was…
