Beyond Clueless (2015)

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

I tried very hard to like this film, but to no avail. I think I expected "Beyond Clueless" to offer an analysis on the effect that the films it featured (1990s and 2000s high school movies such as "Mean Girls" and "The Craft") had on its audience, or provide an argument that the frequent two-dimensional portrayal of teenagers represents adults' undermining the validity of authentic personalities of high schoolers. But no. Apparently the director refers to this film as "an visual essay"- however, the term "essay" infers that there will be an argument presented. There was no argument or original ideas in "Beyond Clueless", merely the summarization of plot points and archetypal characters frequently re-used in high school movies. While the visuals were interesting and entertaining, the film is basically like a really long trailer for both popular and obscure 1990's and 2000's teen-centric films.

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.

I watched this just two days ago and found it very useful in finding new teen films to watch! Maybe the purpose of this documentary should just be to provide film fans with some new ideas for something to watch on a night mid-week. The narration seems jarring at first but I soon got into it and found the flow of the whole doc very steady, there is nothing necessarily new said about the purpose of the teen film or the effect it may have on its viewers, but it is nonetheless fascinating to hear some of the film degree-type theory on the many films included. I'm trying to compile a list at the moment of all the teen films that I thought looked worthwhile watching in Beyond Clueless. I'm excited to start!