Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) - Review

Credited as "Brad's Bud" 

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a year in the life snapshot of a group of characters hoping to find love the way their culture tells them they should, among other day to day struggles they find themselves in. Judge Reinhold and Jennifer Jason Leigh play Brad and Stacy Hamilton, respectively, an older brother who is facing the reality of life outside of high school as the end of his term is staring him in the face, and a younger sister who desires to experience sex and intimacy like her friends but needs help finding out what that means to her. Brian Backer plays a shy and awkward teen, Mark, who is trying to get the attention and approval of Stacy with the help of Robert Romanus' Mike Damone, a sleazy ticket scalper who tries to take advantage of any situation he's in to turn it to his benefit. Sean Penn portrays "the stoner", Jeff Spicoli, who thinks he has found a way to live the easy life at others' expense, most often his overqualified history teacher. Forest Whitaker even stars as this high school's star football player.

Fast Times remains a classic, even 40 years later. This movie is a testament to the fact that no matter how much the world changes, the struggles and desires that teens face remains the same. The movie zips through a school year and a variety of situations that never seemed to go too slow, or too quickly. The pacing is wonderful, and it never feels as though scenes were crammed in or removed to come to a satisfying conclusion. I was surprised to learn that the story came from Cameron Crowe, writer of other classic films (Say Anything..., Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky, etc.) - of which Almost Famous, my father introduced to me far earlier than I could have enjoyed it. Fast Times strikes the fine balance between being about nothing, but about everything at the same time. As a final note of praise for Fast Times, I really found one of the final scenes in the movie involving Brad and Stacy outside of an abortion clinic very heartwarming. I appreciated the fact that Brad was nonjudgmental and non-moralizing of his sister and her situation, but decided to love her and give her what she needed in one of the most difficult moments in her young life. 

The movie has a few non-speaking appearances for Nic Cage, his earliest in his listed credits on Wikipedia and other information sources. I included this movie in my project not just because the actor was present for a few frames, but also because the movie is still really good. It may be slow toward the beginning, but the movie does come to full steam and stay there until the final moments. Fast Times is remarkable in the way it delivers the story, but also the talent that came together to produce the final product. Not everyone had an illustrious career after this movie, but there are a surprising few that have contributed their tremendous talent to this film and many others in subsequent decades.