Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Amy Heckerling’s portrait of high school/shopping mall life in Southern California is still just about as good as it gets...The panoply of teen types and turmoils is dead-on accurate. Read full review

Never all it was cracked up to be. Read full review

Vulgarity is a very tricky thing to handle in a comedy; tone is everything, and the makers of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" have an absolute gift for taking potentially funny situations and turning them into general embarrassment. They're tone-deaf. Read full review

Lewd, funny and immensely quotable, this is one of the very best high school dramas ever made. Read full review

Sean Penn's scenes are still so stunning...His Jeff Spicoli is an unabashed kick every second he is on the screen. Read full review

A young Jennifer Jason Leigh is exceptional, and Judge Reinhold provides a solid central character that nearly everyone in the film relates to. Read full review

Fast Times at Ridgemont High could have been the sleeper success of the summer, but uncertainty of tone and a lame, derivative ending reduce it to the status of a missed opportunity. [13 Aug 1982, p.D6]

Perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of American high school life in the '80s, complete with a Rubik's cube reference, the funny and occasionally harsh Fast Times, with all due apologies to John Hughes and Mickey Rooney, may be the greatest teen movie ever made (even though Cates was the only real teen). Read full review

What Fast Times at Ridgemont High has is an attractive, personable cast, a bunch of young actors who are very easy to like. What it doesn't have is a clear point of view, something that would make it of more interest than leafing through a high school yearbook. Its final sequence, for instance, could just as easily come in the middle of the movie for all the relation it bears to what goes on before. Read full review

The film is far from perfect - the soundtrack occasionally chooses the wrong songs, there are times when the acting (especially by the supporting players) falters, and there are scenes (most of them throw-ways) that don't work. Aside from jump-starting so many promising motion picture careers (including Crowe, Heckerling, and members of the cast), Fast Times will always be remembered for one thing: showing respect for and insight into the members of its core audience, something that was as rare in the 1980s as it is today. Read full review

A Trojan horse of a teen comedy that balanced lowbrow gags with subtle humor, genuine insight—Crowe spent a year undercover as a high-school student—and pathos. Read full review

Compare any of this to the grinding series of vicious gags from, say, pretty much any Ben Stiller movie post-Flirting With Disaster, and Fast Times starts looking like a tame jokefest even grandma can enjoy. There's no crotch damage, no humorously dead animals, no pie-fucking, and no menstrual-blood-on-the-pants jokes, either. At its most graphic, it's got a little good-natured pot humor...It's just pure, lighthearted, relatively respectful fun. With boobs. Read full review

If the publicity release can be believed, he worked an entire year "undercover as a student to research teenage life". On the basis of what surfaces here - one stock phrase (the kids say "Go for it]" a lot) and a multitude of stock characters - Crowe might better have spent the time curled up with re-runs of Ozzie and Harriet. Give this intrepid researcher 12 months at General Motors and he might just discover the wheel. Read full review

There's a lot to make [Heckerling's] film likeable, but not much to hold it together. Read full review

I was surprised at how not-bad it is. It may fall into the category of youth-exploitation movies, but it isn't assaultive, and it's certainly likable. [1 Nov 1982, p.146]

There's the usual array of school stereotypes (the lecher, the stoned surfer, the hustler), a rock score, and endless attention to the rituals of dating and mating. Taken purely on this level, it's a relatively witty example of its kind, with an enjoyable performance from Penn as the stoned surfer, and some good lines. But it lacks the frenzied energy which allowed Porky's to beat all competitors in its field. Read full review

The film's most memorable character is the perpetually stoned surfer played by Sean Penn. His confrontations with Mr. Hand (Walston), a draconian history teacher, provide the film's finest moments. Read full review

The nice thing is that Crowe and director Amy Heckerling have provided something pleasant to observe in all of these characters though they really are sadly lacking in anything gripping. Read full review

At least the film has a sense of humor and a degree of energy... [but the] film never carries any of its characters or situations much beyond weary cliche. [10 Sept 1982, p.29(E)]

Heckerling lacks the intuition to let things flow. The actors seem rushed and the scenes incomplete. For instance, Stacy and her brother Brad (Reinhold) almost build a poignant scene outside the abortion clinic. Just when they're about to show us their stuff, poof, it's off for a car crash or a football game. [13 Aug 1982]

It's an uninspired blend, integrating the boys from "Porky's" and the girls from "Foxes" into a vehicle resembling the worst of "American Graffiti" and the best of "Rock and Roll High School." [13 Aug 1982]