2024-01-06 16:55:00
The teenage comedy by Amy Heckerling, a model of the genre with an XXL cast, is released on DVD.
With his surfboard, his pin-ups in mini-shorts and his stupid dunce slumped on the table, the cover of It’s heating up at Ridgemont high school openly displays its nutriscore E, a 100% saturated fat comedy, well into its early years 80 uninhibited. It has also rarely been considered otherwise here, unlike in the United States where it has been the subject of a significant cult for more than forty years, including in the most demanding spheres – the film joined the prestigious Criterion collection. Anomaly ? Misunderstanding? Loss in translation? Not exactly.
Things are heating up at Ridgemont High School is, initially, the story of a year spent immersed in a Californian high school by a young journalist from Rolling Stone magazine, Cameron Crowe, who subsequently became a recognized filmmaker (Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky). The book, published in 1981 and today unobtainable (second-hand copies sell for up to $2,000), accurately and shamelessly recounted the daily life of high school students at a time when it was ignored or naively idealized.
Which, by extension, made Amy Heckerling’s film, a very incomplete adaptation, sometimes clownish but always faithful to the book in the general spirit, the model of the high school adolescent comedy which will develop during the 80s in the United States. -United. Imitated upon its release by the production company Cannon with the rather successful The Last American Virgin, it would subsequently serve as a major model for the films of John Hugues (Seize Candles for Sam, Breakfast Club).
Last but not least, the casting, an impressive reunion of future big names in their first major role, or even their first role at all: Judge Reinhold, Forest Whitaker, Phoebe Cates, Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and especially Jennifer Jason Leigh and Sean Penn, who share most of the attention. The result is a disconcerting but quite vibrant mix of raw reality and super-pantalonade, tackling very head-on subjects such as drugs, sex or abortion between two appearances by the very young Sean Penn, as buffoonish as possible and already wickedly forcing the trait in the role of a stoner surfer bordering on clinical debility.
Things are heating up at Ridgemont High School by Amy Heckerling with Sean Penn, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold… 1h32. Available on DVD and blu-ray (Elephant Films)
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