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Beyond Clueless appears to be about American teen movies after Clueless up to 2006, but after ten minutes of watching, it becomes apparent that it's actually musings about the nature of the teenagers: they're conformist, struggling with sexuality...and that's about it. This naval gazing is merely illustrated with nearly 200 films (although as you would expect, most of these are simply shots of teenagers walking past the lockers, having sex, etc.).
As this era of teen films is completely looked over in film history (apart from a cursory nod to Mean Girls), it would have been interesting to hear about the making of the films, their influence, etc. Picking a few films to study in closer depth would have made more sense, rather than giving the synopsis of a handful of films (I know the genre is predictable but what's the point in giving spoilers if you have nothing interesting to say about them). It was nice that some obscurer films were mentioned and it wasn't just teen rom-cons (note- there's plenty of nudity, it is very much teens rather than tweens) but there's no actual study of these films as films, rather as a backdrop for the filmmaker Charlie Lyne's naval gazing.
Fairuza Balk's narration is supposed to sound artsy and intellectual but sounds more like she is bored out of her brains.
You'd be better off going to the Wiki page for this film, which lists all the films shown in Beyond Clueless, and picking out a couple to watch.
This filmmaker needs to go back to school to learn how to make a decent cinematic essay!
score 2/10
miss_lady_ice-853-608700 3 April 2021
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw6776472/ |
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