Review: Happy Jane Austen Festival! Let’s Talk About Clueless (Spoilers)

Unbeknownst to me, Jane Austen is actually celebrated for two weeks out of the year, with the first week being Jane Austen Regency Week, which takes place in late June and the Jane Austen festival which is happening right now until September 22 in Bath, England. Who knew that the Jane Austen fandom was that prolific? With that said, it’s time to review my favorite adaptation of Austen’s novel Emma, Clueless (I bet you didn’t know that it was based off of Jane Austen).

#1: Cher

Cher is the 90’s counterpart of Jane Austen’s Emma, and just like Emma, she lives a very privileged life where she is rich, loved and respected by almost everyone, and is intent to give matchmaking a try after successfully matching two of her teachers and things go terribly when she takes the new girl under her wing. While it comes off that she is a terrible person in the first and seconds acts of the movie who is only considering how she will feel after doing a “good deed” for Tai (the new girl), she undergoes a massive character arc as she realizes how selfish she’s been. It’s only then that she starts considering the world outside of her own bubble and apologizes profusely to Tai. Later, she even helps her start a relationship with the guy that she’s liked the entire movie, Travis.

#2: Tai

Tai is Cher’s pet project throughout the movie and doesn’t realize it for the vast majority of the film. She’s naive and is just happy that the popular girls want to be friends with her after not having many friends at her old school. However, she’s also the one who ends up getting the short end of the stick as she’s encouraged to have a crush on Elton, the high school sleazebag who doesn’t really like her, and is discouraged from having a relationship with the guy who actually likes her (not that I’m saying that Travis is a perfect example of who you should date, but he’s definitely better than Elton within the context of the movie). She also becomes like the other girls and loses quite a bit of what made her unique in the first act of the movie as she becomes more popular, something that eventually fades as her old self starts to shine through more.

#3: Elton

I don’t know what it is about this character, but he just makes me so angry. It’s like the “*insert thing here* isn’t real. It can’t hurt you,” meme. He’s not a real person, but he just pisses me off every time he’s on screen. Props to the actor who played him for being able to sell how terrible that character is.

#4: Josh

Josh is a good character if you look at the context of the movie, but if you think about his and Cher’s relationship for longer than two minutes, then he becomes more confusing. On one hand, he’s mature and comfortable with himself, cares about what’s going on in the world, and cares about Cher even though she often acts like a twit. On the other hand, what makes him creepy is the fact that he’s much older than Cher who’s only supposed to be 15-16 and is technically part of her stepfamily. Given that this is supposed to be based off of one of Jane Austen’s books where marrying someone in your stepfamily was less taboo and large age gaps between romantic partners were more acceptable, then maybe that makes it a bit more understandable, but I’m still confused about this character. Do I ship them or is it off to jail with Josh?

#5: The Plot Overall

This movie can be compared to a lot of things, in part thanks to it being an adaptation of Emma, but, like quite a few chick flicks that came out around the 90’s and early 2000’s, it provides some insight into female friendships and how some of them and go from being toxic to being healthy. Though it doesn’t do as good a job at this as Mean Girls does, it still shows both sides of how girls can be very mean to each other intentionally or unintentionally but still apologize and make up for it. An example of this is how Cher, the queen bee of the school, takes Tai under her wing to give her a makeover and things go on from there. While the intentions behind this are mostly selfish, they eventually become something that’s good and the two girls are able to forgive each other for their manipulative tactics and mean words.

All in all, this movie is a classic 90’s comedy that I would easily recommend. Just don’t try to base any relationships on it. I beg you.

Until next time,

M.J.