Heathers revisited
The other night, Twig and I were trying to decide what movie to watch, and I remembered that we'd talked a few months ago about watching Heathers.
It was one of my favorite movies in high school, and I've had it (but never watched it) on VHS for years, but haven't seen it in, oh, probably twenty years.
So, with some trepidation, perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to recapture my lost youth just before turning forty, I set up the VCR and turned on the movie. (I was amazed at how low-resolution it was; haven't watched anything on videotape in a while. But it's possible that this copy is just kind of old and worn-out.)
Sadly, I think my conclusion is that teen suicide and murder just aren't as funny to me now as they were twenty years ago.
There were certainly bits I did still find funny. But they kind of made me chuckle rather than laugh out loud, and they came every five or ten minutes rather than in rapid-fire succession.
The outfits and hair were kind of dated. Christian Slater is still hot, but Winona Ryder doesn't appeal to me as much as she once did. (Nobody told me that when I got older I would stop finding teen Winona Ryder attractive! But more recent pictures of her do still appeal to me, so I suppose it's just as well.) I still like the made-up slang/speech patterns--they were very!--but of course they don't seem as brilliantly new now as they did at the time.
We finally got to the line that I had remembered as being one of the funniest moments in the movie--"I love my dead gay son!"--and it didn't make me laugh. So we turned off the movie.
I suppose I may watch the rest of it at some point; I don't really remember the second half of the movie so well, except of course for the final couple of scenes.
(Funny thing is, when I saw Mean Girls my main thought was that it was okay, but no Heathers. But now I wonder if it's just that I'm no longer the right audience for this kind of movie.)
Makes me wonder whether I should give up on my thoughts of re-watching some other old favorites. Will After Hours have aged well? What about Hill Street Blues?
But I did still love Brazil and Repo Man last time I saw them (a few years ago for each), so there's still hope.
