Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Perhaps I’m a jaded modern viewer. Or maybe I’m just coming at it with fresh eyes unclouded by nostalgia…but I’m not a big fan of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. If you haven’t already guessed, I came to this film cold. I’d never seen it before reviewing this disc and I don’t know if I’ll ever return to it. It’s not an awful movie, but it’s extremely disjointed and somewhat shallow. 

It’s essentially a series of vignettes centered on a small group of students at RHS. Structurally, it meanders, dropping in and out of these students’ lives to spotlight certain turning points in their respective high school experiences: sex, losing their virginity, getting fired, sex, visits to the morgue, getting high, sex…you get the picture. This might have been somewhat revelatory in 1982, but now it just seems somewhat pedantic (and in the case of the abortion scene, dangerously dismissive).