Fine Wine: Happy Birthday, 'Clueless!'

Grab your Cranberries CD from the quad and haul ass to the ladies’ room because we’re totally buggin'! It’s been eighteen years since the release of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, the 1995 sleeper hit that thrust us into the plaid-clad world of Southern California princess Cher Horowitz. In case you haven't seen it (ugh as if!)... Cher and BFF Dionne Davenport (both named after great singers of the past who now do infomercials) have the boys and babes of Beverly Hills High wrapped around their fingers. But when report cards roll around, the pair play matchmakers to their totally tragic teachers in hopes of re-negotiating their rock-bottom grades. This good deed inspires Cher to go all Extreme Makeover on Tai Fraiser, a trashy New Jersey import with a fondness for flannel. Tai rolls with the homies a little too well, and though Cher momentarily falls off the top of the social pyramid faster than she told a mugger he'd ruin her Alaïa, everything ends happily in Hollywood.

Clueless' satirizing of teenage hyper-materialism is so much more than a blend of iconic style with one-liners more classic than Cher's house. (The columns date all the way back to 1972!) Featured on the syllabus of my first American Studies course at George Washington University (you bet I did better than Cher's C in debate), the film is as much a poignant social commentary as it is a Calvin Klein catalog. All-star casting efforts made the class of '95 one of the most memorable since John Hughes' Breakfast Club. Clueless is often credited with providing Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Breckin Meyer, and Donald Faison with their breakout roles. Toss in one of the best film soundtracks of the past decade—equal parts Beastie Boy beats and Jill Souble's "Supermodel"— and you've successfully inspired generations of Jeep-driving mallrats to keep partying with the Haiti-ans far into the future, hope not sporadically.