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.

This film is amazing its a perfect satire on the "john hughes" type films of the mid to late 80s. While those films are great in there own fun amd quirky ways this is pne pf those that truly captures the struggles and angst of teens at that time and I still think that it applies today. Its the perfect teen satire. A must watch and a must in your movie collection!

In the 80s when I was growing up, I saw films like this — films where the only person who appeared to even come close to defending the humanity of gay people was a serial killer.Yes, folks. We gay kids got either the dumb abusive jocks who will beat us up or the serial killer who will appear to defend us just so he can get lucky with a girl. Fun! As usual, the only possibly gay people are laughable and weak. But, more importantly — in this film gayness is just a punchline, without actual gay people anywhere to really be found.It's supposed to be sophisticated satire but it's not. Walking on geraniums and hitting a person in the head with a croquet ball is not sophisticated satire.It's not always sophisticated satire with the suicide theme, either. It does better in that regard, though — such as by lampooning the self-promoting social justice warrior Pauline and the unconcerned conventional blowhards around her.The feel-good conventional morality of Veronica at the end is cute but very Hollywood-fake.Ryder is an incredible actress and this film is definitely a vehicle for her, bad as it is. Fans of her beauty and incredible acting will like this film.Slater's father is not at all believable, nor is he all that funny. And, unsurprisingly, the Hollywood view of high school life is not much at all like what high school is actually like. If the writer had wanted something realistic to make the jocks look bad it would have had a scene where they sodomize a weaker guy in the locker room with on object. That sort of thing happens all the time in the US. By contrast, arranged threesomes (with or without cow-tipping) are the sort of things that happen in scripts. Instead of just being sappy and stupid bullies, the film could have showed the level of barbarism actual high school bullies will stoop to. But, this is light humor, where making fun of invisible gay people is easier.And no, outside of a Hollywood film, no woman with a functional IQ would have drunk that concoction.The best scene in the film is when Veronica drops the photo of her with Betty Finn, as Heather drags her away. That sort of thing is what the film could have done more of. Instead, it drowns itself, and us, in cheesy camp.There are some good camp lines here, though, like when she suggests to Slater that he stay home and shoot a few toasters. Bulimia is so '87 is a favorite, as well as a true friend's work is never done. So, it has its moments here and there.

Heathers is a decidedly unusual teen movie. While it covers some territory familiar to other films aimed at the same demographic, it does so in a manner that is less obvious and darker. It's essentially a black comedy about two types of malign influences that teenagers find themselves prone to, namely peer pressure from the popular and the appeal of the charismatic outsider. Both types of influence are shown here to have potentially horrendous consequences. Set in the American Midwest in and around a high school, there is a clique compromising of the four most popular girls in school. They are the (three) Heathers and Veronica; they revel in cruelty to those less fortunate than themselves. Things begin to change when Veronica develops a conscience and begins to see the Heathers for what they really are, a situation which is exacerbated by the influence of her new boyfriend, who has a psychotic side to him. Things are about to turn deadly.Heathers is an unusual film in that it doesn't lay out its intentions very clearly and it takes a bit of thought to try and work out the direction it is coming from. In many ways this is one of its strengths in that it is quite original and relatively unpredictable. It's probably also true that its content and tone don't always exactly match up, with the dark undercurrents being somewhat at odds with the pure comedy moments that compromise a large part of the proceedings. For the most part this weird combination essentially works, although I thought it did finally go off the rails by the final act which seemed out of place and a bit banal. Still, on the whole, it was an engagingly odd teen comedy which had the good grace to be actually laugh-out-loud funny on occasions such as the funeral with the football helmets, what a bottle of mineral water signifies in Ohio and a lot of funny dialogue sprinkled throughout. Much of the humour is of a dark kind though with much of it coming from the subject of teenage suicide and its aftermath. The film does explore this issue plus the different kinds of bad influences teenagers encounter very effectively. Also key to the success of the film is a winningly charismatic central performance from Wynona Ryder which helped propel her in to the front rank. Christian Slater also rose to prominence here with what is essentially a Jack Nicholson impersonation; it's a thoroughly punchable-face performance from start to finish. All-in-all, this unusual and somewhat transgressive teen comedy can fairly be considered a cult movie. Its combination of an appealingly colourful look, combined with smart comedy and dark undercurrents makes it one of the more interesting films of its type for sure.