Greg I finally got around to seeing Heathers after all of these years. It is kind of funny seeing the parallels between Chrstian Slater's J.D. and his character on Mr. Robot.The good: It very much captures the teenage angst of the late 80's in pre-Internet world. Slater and Ryder do excellent jobs with their characters. There are many quotable lines and funny moments. This is a very dark comedy and you can tell that tongues or often planted firmly in cheek.The bad: This movie could never be made today with the epidemic of school schootings and teen suicides etc. Slater's character was very prescient in forseeings what would be coming a decade later. One can even argue that poplularization of a film like this spread the message of the anguished, outsider teen who gets glory by attacking a school and killing people. but obviously the filmmakers cannot be held responsible for what happens later.The other thing that bothers me about the film is that it often falls into as many cliches as it avoids. 80's teen films were very homophobic. Here we see the typical set-up: Football players call the protagonist/villain a f*g, he then reciprocates in framing this elaborate scheme in which the boys die allegedly as gay lovers. It is often not clear where the satire ends and genuine homophobia so prevalent in the 1980's comes into play. Yes, it is clearly a joke that the fact they have mineral water, a Joan Crawford postcard etc., which they just carry around, is a sure sign they are gay. It is less clear that the way their day is presented is supposed to be a joke - the town seems to all ridicule the dead boys for being gay and share a common disgust and the audience gets the impression that the gay frame-up is the just reward for having called Slater a f*g in the beginning.Moreover, the film really ends on a bit of a cliched note. Ryder has participated in several murders but just walks away from the attempted mass-murder of the school like nothing happened. This time, she will be nice to the overweight student with zero social life - who was really just a prop for ridicule in this world, so that makes it all ok. Again, this is a black comedy and parody but, again, it is not always clear what cliches of the teen genre they are avoiding and which ones, some greatly unacceptable by today's standards, they fall right into.

classicsoncall Interestingly, there are some films that were wildly popular at the time they were released, but today seem like they should never have been made in the first place. Such a movie is "Heathers", when viewed within the context of massive school shootings and rampant suicide by disaffected members of society. I really couldn't get into the spirit of this picture, if spirit is even the right word. Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) seemed like the only responsible girl in her clique of multiple Heathers, yet succumbed to the fake charm of outsider Jason Dean (Christian Slater). That J.D.'s last name was Dean ought to give one an indication that in matters of high school decorum, he truly was a rebel without a cause.As a satire and parody of teenage disaffection the story has some merit, but when the principal characters take it to it's ultimate extreme, it ceases to be funny. So much so, that it's easy to come away with the impression that J.D. and Veronica wound up killing all three Heathers when in fact it was only Heather Red (Kim Walker) that got the Drano treatment. Heather Green (Shannen Doherty) surfaced to take her place as Westerburg High's resident queen bee, while Heather Yellow (Lisanne Falk) was ignominiously dumped from the script following her bathroom meltdown attended by a supportive Veronica.Besides the understated James Dean connection, I also had to do a quick double take when the story line introduced Veronica's former best friend. Taking place in the fictional town of Sherwood, Ohio, I was quite expecting Archie, Reggie and Jughead to show up from nearby Riverdale, because when all was said and done, why else would you introduce a couple of your principal characters as Betty and Veronica?

Michael Fuchs So it's a cult movie that seems to strike a nerve with everyone having gone to an American high school. Not being American, I have some trouble relating to the characters, even taking into account their obvious caricature. There are some bumpy p(l)ot holes along the way, like Heather number one gulping down the drink without even sniffing it just because she was 'dared', the second footballer/victim running directly back to where he knows the first one was killed (even as brainless as he is, that's a reach), J.D. speaking out loud (not even psychopaths regularly do that unless is furthers the story) to a faceless hanged Veronica so obviously not hanging from her neck, Veronica turning up at school without a plan or an attempt to warn the other people, randomly looking for J.D. who could be blowing up the school at every moment. Just because it's satire doesn't mean you should just give a free pass to every terribly constructed story turn.I like both lead actors, had a crush on Winona Ryder like every teenage boy with eyes in the nineties. But even though there is gushing praise for their acting in many people's reviews here, my experience was different. Making a caricature out of a character is easy, playing the caricature in a believable way is hard. I didn't feel they were able to pull the latter off.The 6/10 is a measure of enjoying the challenge the movie presents, to homicide and suicide portrayal ethics, to your ability to digest the first unexpected murder, to rule violations in general like the compassionate protagonist clinically witnessing her former boyfriend's gory suicide.The movie is different, unconstrained and is bound to tumble around in your thoughts for a while.

Elain-ee Heathers had a really, really well-timed appearance in my life. It came out when I was halfway through my first year of junior high at the end of the 1980s, and feeling utterly bewildered by these outlandish creatures around me: the eighties trendsetters. Their alien styles and feral egotism was captured perfectly in Heathers, depicting the way high school seems when seen through the eyes of a meek, unpretentious beginner. Veronica Sawyer (played by Ryder) is a girl like you, me and pretty much anyone that was ever a junior student, desperate to fit in. But not THAT desperate!The garish style of the characters in Heathers was never meant to be realistic... a fact that seems to have been lost on almost all viewers that were born after 1985. It was a brutal and massive send-up of everything that was hateful about the 1980s - and there was loads! But despite all the exaggeration, Heathers served up a very accurate reflection of way that the secondary school environment really seemed to my dazed, adolescent eyes. And yet shoulder pads were never *that* big, hippies were never THAT f*cked up in class and the bad boy never carried a gun (this was back in the days before the real high school shootings began). We all knew that Heathers wasn't meant to be realistic, at least not on a factual level. It was meant to be realistic on an emotional one, though, and it fully succeeded at that. It was a revenge fantasy flick with a heart: a satirical and strangely sensitive depiction of the awe and shame that all teens feel about their high school experience. Just when Heathers starts to seem like it's turning into a cartoonish, late-night stoner special, the murders begin. And then it gets dark... and awesome. Anyone who's been to a high school where they met their own 'Heathers' will feel alternately euphoric and disturbed about the events that follow. And that's what they should feel: it's a tale that's meant to make you reflect, and question your easy assumptions about the way 'everybody else' is. Even the "Heathers" in your life. It's a shame that Americans have stopped making films that really delve into the ugliest, funniest parts of being a teen the way that Heathers did. Subsequent generations of juniors could have really benefited from seeing more stuff like this. Teens generally have very few chances to really reflect upon their attitudes, and maybe even change them before setting off on a destructive (or self-destructive) warpath. Heathers gave me that chance and I was glad that I had it. Whatever your age, watch this film and you'll learn something that no school can ever teach you about being a teen... and have a laugh doing it.