Beyond Clueless
Do you ever wish the likes of EuroTrip and The Craft received the same kind of forensic critical scrutiny reserved for canonised classics? Charlie Lyne certainly does. He takes his deep – but often sceptical – admiration for teen movies and pours it into Beyond Clueless, creating a hypnotic hymn to this much maligned genre.
Best known for his irreverent movie blog Ultra Culture, Lyne’s film essay takes the form of a textual analysis of the wide-ranging high-school movies that flooded the market on the coat-tails of Amy Heckerling's eponymous touchstone – but don’t let that put you off. Through witty editing, a mesmerising narration (by smoky-voiced cult teen star Fairuza Balk) and a hair-raising score (provided by indie pop duo Summer Camp), Lyne makes a compelling case that these candy-coloured teenage confections have dark, poisonous cores.
These are films concerned with sexual repression and social conformity: some are insidious blueprints for how to become wholesome, all-American citizens; others rally against such conservatism. The movies chosen for deeper analysis are pleasantly left-field, with forgotten oddities such as Ginger Snaps, Bubble Boy and Disturbing Behaviour rubbing shoulders with genre classics such as Rushmore and Mean Girls – and I defy anyone not to seek out Idle Hand, a seemingly insane horror/comedy/masturbation analogy, after seeing it dissected here.