141. Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Song - Saturday Night (Herman Brood)

Movie: Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982)

Inadvertently, a great argument for not being a team player. Most of the cast here is wonderfully in tune with each other and with the sweet and endearing vibe of the film, letting the vulnerability, insecurity and excitement of their characters seep through in their performances. It's obvious that all these young actors, at the beginning of their careers, loved the film and loved working with each other to make the best of it. The exception is Sean Penn, who gives the least chill performance of a surfer dude ever. More annoyingly, he is so committed to showing that what he is doing is so special and unique that he completely stops the film in its tracks anytime he appears on screen. It's an utterly stupid and ill-conceived performance. In hindsight, it's hard to blame him. His Jeff Spiccoli could have, and perhaps should have, retired him from acting. Instead, Spiccoli became an iconic character and Penn went on to have the most successful career out of the entire Ridgemont cast.

I am quite fond of The Pledge, Into the Wild and Milk, but Judge Reinhold should have been the biggest star on the evidence of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (Though if you want to be a star you probably shouldn't appear next to 80's Eddie Murphy. Can't really blame the audience for not paying much attention to you in that situation.) He plays Brad Hamilton, a teen who realises that he is less mature than he thinks he is, but doesn't realise that this makes him more mature than he thinks he is, to utter perfection. The scenes where he debates how to break up with his girlfriend are really glorious. He wants to explore seeing other people, knows that this is a perfectly normal response for a teen, but isn't 100% sure whether this knowledge is correct. And so he tries to come up with all kinds of reasons for breaking up, knowing that all those reasons are bullshit. His reaction when his girlfriend actually breaks up with him, because she wants to see other people, is a priceless combination of relief, regret, amusement and disappointment. He gets into more awkward situations in the rest of the film, similarly responding to them with both annoyance and a knowing bemusement, aware of the fact that these are the kind of situations teens sometimes end up in, and there is not much one can do about it. 

An early scene is key to the character and to the film as a whole. Washing his car with a grin on his face, his younger sister Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), having lost her virginity the previous night, comes up to him, asking him to hide from their parents the flowers she just received. He helps her without teasing her or making her in any way uncomfortable. That dynamic will be again visible when Stacy needs an abortion, a plot point that badly fits in with the rest of the film, but does again highlight Brad's goodness and comfort in his own skin, without ever turning him into a mature adult. It's really not the kind of character you usually see in these kinds of comedies, certainly not from that period. The rest of the film is quite good too, though it lacks big laughs and a certain manic energy that the best comedies of its ilk have. It makes up of for that with a sort of quiet wisdom, understanding that teens often fear getting what they want much more than not getting what they want. And that anxiety about asking a girl out, is often about the fear that she will actually say yes.