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62 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasure on so many levels, April 10, 2004
"Fast Times at Ridgemont High" Is a strong contender for the best teen movie from the eighties. The case for the movie is easy to make: It is written by Cameron Crowe, who wrote Jerry Maguire, Say Anything, and Almost Famous. It is beautifully filmed and directed. (Director is Amy Heckerling, who apart from being awefully cute has made such wonderful movies as Clueless.) It is funny and real. And it has a magnificent cast of young actors who where unknowns then. The surfer/stoner is famously played by Sean Penn in one of his first roles, and he is awesome. Jennifer Jason Leigh is perfect as the young innocent fifteen-year-old. (Amazingly she was about 20 when she played it, but you'd never know it.) And Phoebe Cates... As Amy Heckerling says in a featurette: The boys just loves Phoebe... the rental cassettes always track a lot around the place where she takes off her top, they've been freeze-framed so much..." Which is as good a reason as any to get the DVD version, they slow-mo and freeze-frame a lot better... But seriously, Phoebe is a wonderful actress who has been woefully underused by Hollywood. And she is also just stunningly cute to boot. Even if this film had nothing else going for it, get it for her. (She is also excellent in the later film Princess Caraboo, and she is buck nude in the light "Paradise", which I hope they will put on DVD soon.) Eolake
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55 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Another FT ripoff - still no no missing scenes restored!, February 2, 2005
I can't believe the director of this movie keeps standing for the out and out censorship of this! It's (at least) the third release of it on DVD, and this latest (Nov. 2004) try is still a dud. The big problem remains the scenes which they only include in the cable TV versions of this, but keep cutting from the DVD. Why the heck do they?
One of the missing scenes is a very cool safe sex/birth control scene in the mall, for instance. Fast Times sticks out as one of the very rare films that this odd censorship has been performed on. In fact, out of thousands of releases since DVDs started in 1995, this is almost the only one this has ever happened to!
So again we can only ask why? WHY?
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fast Times indeed!, July 10, 2006
One of the classic high school movies, Fast Times spawned a slew of teenage talent on the big screen, but no one was more memorable in this movie than Sean Penn as Spicoli. Amy Heckerling cuts out a slice of Southern Californian life from a San Bernardino high school that shows both honor students and misfits alike. While the signature moments belonged to Spicoli, there were many other great scenes such as the ongoing burger war in which Judge Reinhold finds himself on the short end of the spatula. Meanwhile his little sis, a seemingly innocent Jennifer Jason Leigh, experiments with dating and sex with an amusing pair of misfits, Brian Backer and Robert Romanus. Phoebe Cates tries to set her young prodigy straight but to no avail. Forest Whitaker even has a significant moment in this movie as the bruising defensive lineman who takes out the destruction of his prized car on the opposing team. Little did he know that Spicoli had a hand in it. But, it is the hilarious relationship between Spicoli and Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) that steals the show. Fast Times may appear a bit dated, but it hasn't lost any of its humor.
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