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When this documentary is at its best it uses short clips from literally hundreds of teen movies from '90's and early '00's to illustrate the underlying themes of 'high school life".
What I liked most about it is the way it does a kind of stream of consciousness speed read on a bunch of movies I was aware of but never saw. I suspect many of the scenes used to illustrate each of the chapter themes are the best bits of some of those films.
As such "Beyond Clueless" is a personal tour of film moments and themes by the writer. At times there are insights and narrator Fairuza Balk gets her film The Craft featured at the start. Clearly some chapters are more insightful than others.
This documentary reminded my of Mark Cousins - 'The Story of Film' opus. That was an idiosyncratic romp through film history that at times delighted but could also be a bit annoying.
By contrast 'Beyond Clueless" mostly hist the mark in the way that it deconstructs the themes and nuances of dozens of teen films ( 180-200).
It is almost like if you wanted to make a teen film you could pick sequences from the same set of films to make something much smarter than the originals.
I have watched parts of this more than once and will use it as a guide to see if there are some hidden gems in the teen related genres that I should see
score 7/10
conannz 28 May 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3478069/ |
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11-4-2021 12:05:04