'Clueless' and 'Kids,' two very different teen movies, turn 30

In July of 2025, a pair of movies looked at groups of teenagers, on opposite coasts, who might as well have been on opposite planets.

The 1990s were a big decade for teen movies, and two of the more memorable ones arrived within a couple of weeks of each other in July of that year. And while both involved teenagers preoccupied with love and occasional drug use, Clueless and Kids were set on opposite coasts, and might as well have been from opposite universes as well.

Both films arrived 30 years ago this month. The actors, therefore, are all now pushing 50, although both films had cast members who are no longer with us.

Amy Heckerling had directed a definitive teen movie of a generation earlier, 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and then, 13 years later, she wrote and directed Clueless.

It may have been loosely adapted from Jane Austen’s “Emma,” during the period when teen movies usually had Austen or Shakespearean pedigrees, but everything about the aesthetics, music, and clothes places the film directly in the mid-Clinton era. There are very large cell phones, pagers, and early Radiohead songs that still had guitars in them.

Sticking to a version of the Austen novel’s plot, the film follows Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone), a beautiful, popular, and extremely wealthy teenager who navigates matchmaking, makeovers, and potential love.

In it, she’s joined by a cast of teen actors of the era, with Paul Rudd (as her ex-stepbrother-turned-love interest) the only real future A-lister among them, although the cast also included the likes of Breckin Meyer, Jeremy Sisto, and Donald Faison.

The first act is mostly about Cher’s plot to set up two teachers (Wallace Shawn and Twink Caplan), since that’s what happens in the Austen novel, while eventually the plot segues into Cher and her friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) and their quest to make over new girl Tai (Brittany Murphy). The plot eventually pivots into Cher’s romantic entanglements, first with a fellow teen (Justin Walker) who turns out to be gay, and eventually with Rudd’s Josh.

Silverstone debuted in a sleazy 1993 thriller called The Crush, before gaining major fame in a series of Aerosmith videos. Clueless was her big star-making role, deservedly, although her movie stardom didn’t end up having a great deal of staying power; she continues to act fairly prolifically to this day.

As pointed out by the Erotic ‘90s season of You Must Remember This, and elsewhere, critics and media members were extremely cruel towards Silverstone in those years, especially about her weight, in a way that’s in no way defensible. Like a lot of actresses in that decade, a lot of pieces were written about Silverstone that amounted to “she’s hot, and I’m very mad at her for being so hot.”

Like most movies that are 30 years old, there are parts of Clueless that are a bit iffy to modern eyes. It scriptis obsessed with virginity in a somewhat creepy way, while its treatement of starving and eating disorders is a bit blase. Christian, the gay character, is given just about no dignity at all; he doesn’t even get to come out, or have any character arc beyond Cher being disappointed that she can’t date him.

Also, is Cher a Jewish caricature? Her last name is Horowitz, and she’s rich, greedy, materialistic, and clothes-obsessed. But she’s also blond, and doesn’t look or speak in a way that’s otherwise Jewish-coded, even though Silverstone was herself raised Jewish.