6. Clueless
I remember seeing this in the theater with my brother and sister. I was a boy of a mere eight years of age and had yet to fully understand what it meant to have a crush on an actress. And then I saw Alicia Silverstone. I was temporarily removed from myself and looked down upon my own body and saw a smile I'd never seen before. Silverstone was the first movie hottie I can remember registering in a brain now full of many. So yeah, she's special to me. Since then, this movie has become a staple and something I have great nostalgia for. Based on Jane Austen's Novel
Emma, the film is funny and wonderful because of Amy Heckerling's brilliant writing and direction. It's quirky and witty and captures Jane Austen in a way most people probably thought, "Excuse me, what?" Let's take Emma and put her in Beverly Hills, and...go! The film is loaded full of funny and unique (for the time these were some of the first of these character types, now much of them are stereotypical) characters who make you smile from beginning to end. The antics are only a little girly but easy to embrace because you feel bad for the privileged and ditsy Cher who means well but fails at every turn. It's also fun to see a very young Paul Rudd, who hasn't really changed a bit in his demeanor, play the romantic lead. Clueless did for the genre what others learned to do later, borrow from the brilliance of those who've done it before. Aside from Shakespeare, who knows the love story better than Jane Austen? By using source material and making it new, fresh, and giving it it's own original spin, Clueless becomes a funny, sweet film that gives girls room to connect and guys room to fall in love. Because of it's intelligence it becomes more than just one film in the genre, it becomes a staple and should be credited as doing for the genre what few have done, reinvented it.