Spending last week learning life lessons from the recently released teen flicks was like heading up ‘Dawson’s Creek” without a paddle.
Initially, all I could see was that 17-year-old girls don’t need WonderBras, but eventually, as I journeyed through these acne adventures, I saw much, much more.
From the Texas twang of the surprise hit ‘Varsity Blues” to the ‘Beverly Hills 90210” gloss of ‘She’s All That” to the Midwestern grunge of ‘Another Day in Paradise,” one thing is clearer than crystal meth: The dynamic duo of drinking until you puke and sexual precocity are a given on the contemporary high school – and dropout – scene.
All you parents out there: Be afraid, be very afraid. It’s no wonder schools distribute condoms in the sixth grade.
‘She’s All That” is a California campus-set ‘Pygmalion,” pairing Freddie Prinze Jr. with Rachael Leigh Cook. He’s a brilliant, brown-eyed B.M.O.C.; she’s a socially challenged four-eyed artist.
When Prinze’s popular gal pal Jodi Lyn O’Keefe dumps him, he bets his buddies he can cook Cook into a prom queen in eight weeks.
The early scenes of ‘She’s All That” are pure ‘Clueless” – you can never be too rich or too shallow. But by the poolside conclusion, little pent-up Rachael learns to open her heart and toss her glasses while Freddie, the high school prince, learns to open his eyes and follow his heart.
The ‘Varsity Blues” high schoolers aren’t so different from the ‘She’s All That” gang. Though the former focuses on football – not makeovers – the big dudes on campus, like their ‘All That” L.A. counterparts, drink until they barf. Their only innovation is puking in the washing machine.
‘Varsity” may be set in a Texas backwater, but head cheerleader Ali Larter must have learned home ec from the Playboy Channel. Larter seduces sweet-cheeked jocks, wearing a bikini made only out of Redi-Whip. Can it be that contemporary teens know tricks that would make Jane Fonda’s ‘Klute” hooker blush?
The message for these footballers is to ‘win at all costs,” an agenda fervently pursued by coach Jon Voight. Yet the lesson hero quarterback James Van Der Beek learns is that winning is only worthwhile if it’s for the right reasons. Deep.
Naturally, there’s never any doubt that youth will triumph over experience. And sure enough, Van Der Beek unseats Voight, stripping the older man of his beloved footballs, and delivers the Gipper speech: ‘Let’s be heroes. Give it your all and don’t be afraid to fail.”
Heroism is less an issue than scoring heroin for the adolescent star of ‘Another Day in Paradise.” Larry Clark’s follow-up to ‘Kids” is no traditional teen flick. It dramatizes the sentimental education of Vincent Kartheiser’s wide-eyed thieving teenager and his drug-friendly squeeze, Natasha Wagner, by James Woods, a sociopathic hood, and his heroin-shooting moll, Melanie Griffith.
Like Prinze and Cook or Voight and Van Der Beek, Woods mentors Kartheiser selfishly. The older man teaches the drug-addled teen the basics of breaking and entering, drug peddling and marksmanship.
Ironically, Woods’ charismatic junkie is not so different from Voight’s authoritarian football coach. Both men demand total obedience and unquestioning loyalty, although Woods would be more fun to invite over to watch today’s football game.
But the biggest life lesson gleaned from our teen film foray is that adults are an unpredictable, inconsistent lot. We have Prinze’s overworked dad, who ignores his son in ‘She’s All That,” Voight, who injects his quarterback’s knee with drugs that lead to the boy’s (literal) downfall, and then the ingratiating Woods. Adults, it seems, are more hazardous to the health of growing teens than a swimming pool of beer with a Valium chaser.
