Released in 1989, HEATHERS received sharply mixed reviews. The film was popular in a few major metro markets, but it proved a box office disappointment overall. Although many regarded it as a failed take-off on such "high school angst" films as THE BREAKFAST CLUB, more than a few critics saw it as a film too much ahead of its time and predicted that it would have more of an impact down the road. They were right. When the film began to reach the home market it exploded in popularity, and given such later high school horrors as Columbine today the film seems less take-off than downright prophetic.
It is also one of the most wickedly funny movies to hit the screen since Stanley Kubrik's DR. STRANGELOVE. The story starts off normally enough: extremely bright, extremely attractive Veronica (Winona Ryder) is a high school junior who has fallen in with the high school clique to end all high school cliques, three young women each named Heather (Kim Walker, Lisanne Falk, and Shannen Doherty.) The Heathers are pretty, smart, rich... and intent on shoring up their own social positions by crushing every one around them with a degree of vindictiveness that only the teenagers can successfully carry.
When Veronica meets new student J.D. Dean (Christian Slater) her interest in the Heathers begins to wane and they turn on her. J.D. has his own plan to help Veronica get even. It involves a cup of Liquid Drano--and before Veronica can think she finds herself making a murder look like suicide. The result is, as Veronica puts it, teen-age angst with a body count, and quite suddenly suicide seems the "in thing" at Westerberg High.
If you recall high school fondly, you were probably one of the popular kids. For the rest of us, HEATHERS is so accurate that it will make you wince in its portrait of unthinking cruelty: the meanness of the up-scale cliques and brainless jocks, the ridiculed good kids, the savage assaults on the unpopular ones. it is bitter, bitter stuff.
It is also extremely funny. Much of this is due to a truly brilliant script by Daniel Waters, who recognizes that teens rarely speak to adults in the same way that they speak to each other--and he not only brings forth the casually used profanity, he essentially creates a truly believable and hilariously funny mode of slang that characterizes the "in crowd." And Waters' plot is even more disconcerting and outrageously funny as it runs, with unexpected logic, to a truly deadly conclusion.
The performances are knockouts. Ryder has given quite a few memorable performances, but she has never been more remarkable than she is here as Veronica, the good girl turned unintentional killer; Christian Slater has never topped the performance he gives here as J.D. The "Heathers" are perfectly, flawless cast, as is every one from the weary principal to Veronica's vacuous parents. As for direction, Michael Lehmann moves the film at a rapid clip, hitting more high points than you can imagine. Indeed, everything about the film is first-rate.
The DVD package is very nice, including an interesting audio commentary, an interesting documentary featuring interviews with director, writer, and major cast members (Kim Walker, who died in 2001, sadly excepted), and a script of the ending as originally planned by writer Waters. I recommend the film as a "must have"--but a word of warning. If you were one of the very popular during your high school years, you won't find it in the least enjoyable. Yes: that's really how the rest of us saw you.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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