Beyond Clueless

"Beyond Clueless" is a dizzying journey into the mind, body and soul of the teen movie, as seen through the eyes of over 200 modern coming-of-age classics.

Unfortunately, this "documentary" consists of nothing more than plot summaries. No actors or directors talking about the films, no film critics trying to analyze them. Just Fairuza Balk talking over the top of film clips, apparently sharing the opinion of one writer (though even this is unclear).

It was great to see such films as "Idle Hands", "Ginger Snaps" and "Doom Generation" appear beyond the more mainstream high school films. Even "Jeepers Creepers", which has little to do with high school at all. (Though they are spot on to call out the gay theme.) So that was nice, even if the film as a whole is rather worthless.

And why the focus on the 1990s? There is something to be said about teen movies of the 1990s, to be sure. But this film never made it clear about how they differ from the 1980s, 1970s or any other decade. What was the point of this selected focus?

This movie pretends to be a documentary- in the description offered at the Sonoma International Film Festival, it listed a "superstar cast" of people like Leonardo DiCaprio and Jake Gyllenhaal, when it fact it is merely a boring series of clips from movies those people were in. It's like watching a book report on teen movies. Fairuza Balk narrates in a flat voice with zero inflection that makes me wonder how she ever became an actress. The film makes no attempt at a central thesis, has no original footage or interviews with experts in any capacity, and should not be afforded any sort of attention whatsoever. Please do not spend money on this drivel.

When this documentary is at its best it uses short clips from literally hundreds of teen movies from '90's and early '00's to illustrate the underlying themes of 'high school life".

What I liked most about it is the way it does a kind of stream of consciousness speed read on a bunch of movies I was aware of but never saw. I suspect many of the scenes used to illustrate each of the chapter themes are the best bits of some of those films.

As such "Beyond Clueless" is a personal tour of film moments and themes by the writer. At times there are insights and narrator Fairuza Balk gets her film The Craft featured at the start. Clearly some chapters are more insightful than others.

This documentary reminded my of Mark Cousins - 'The Story of Film' opus. That was an idiosyncratic romp through film history that at times delighted but could also be a bit annoying.

By contrast 'Beyond Clueless" mostly hist the mark in the way that it deconstructs the themes and nuances of dozens of teen films ( 180-200).

It is almost like if you wanted to make a teen film you could pick sequences from the same set of films to make something much smarter than the originals.

I have watched parts of this more than once and will use it as a guide to see if there are some hidden gems in the teen related genres that I should see

Beyond Clueless appears to be about American teen movies after Clueless up to 2006, but after ten minutes of watching, it becomes apparent that it's actually musings about the nature of the teenagers: they're conformist, struggling with sexuality...and that's about it. This naval gazing is merely illustrated with nearly 200 films (although as you would expect, most of these are simply shots of teenagers walking past the lockers, having sex, etc.).

As this era of teen films is completely looked over in film history (apart from a cursory nod to Mean Girls), it would have been interesting to hear about the making of the films, their influence, etc. Picking a few films to study in closer depth would have made more sense, rather than giving the synopsis of a handful of films (I know the genre is predictable but what's the point in giving spoilers if you have nothing interesting to say about them). It was nice that some obscurer films were mentioned and it wasn't just teen rom-cons (note- there's plenty of nudity, it is very much teens rather than tweens) but there's no actual study of these films as films, rather as a backdrop for the filmmaker Charlie Lyne's naval gazing.

Fairuza Balk's narration is supposed to sound artsy and intellectual but sounds more like she is bored out of her brains.

You'd be better off going to the Wiki page for this film, which lists all the films shown in Beyond Clueless, and picking out a couple to watch.

This filmmaker needs to go back to school to learn how to make a decent cinematic essay!

I saw this at Branchage in Jersey and was very disappointed. I was expecting behind the scenes footage, interviews with actors, directors and writers. Instead, we got hit with the plot and supposed subtext of each film, most of which were obscure and crap. I even thought they might link back to the classic teen films that actually had value but no, they stuck with the crap like Cruel Intentions 3.

First off, giving subtext to films that have no subtext is a futile exercise i.e. She's All That has nothing interesting to say at any point, the characters are as deep as a paddling pool, it was crap then and its even worse now. It's about vanity, we get it.

The next thing is discussing subtext that is actually the context i.e. Josie and the Pussycats. The plot revolves around brainwashing to sell things, for the 2 people (I think I was one of those) that actually saw the cinematic release we got this. We don't need you to tell us that again, it was painful enough the first time.

The Q&A with the director informed us that most of the budget was spent on lawyers in LA authorising the clips, they must have been rubbing their hands when you came a-knocking.

Avoid unless you wrote any of the crap films used in this doc so you can have a good laugh as they over-complicate your one-track stoner comedy/girl takes off glasses and is now hot/girls being out of order to each other/jocks having a sensitive side screenplay.

Mean girls is a good movie though.