Clueless

Clueless is a 1995 American coming-of-age teen comedy film written and directed by Amy Heckerling. It stars Alicia Silverstone, and produced by Scott Rudin and Robert Lawrence.
The film is a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma. The plot centers on a beautiful, popular, wealthy high school student who wants to do "good deeds." She befriends a newcomer and decides to give her a makeover while playing matchmaker for her teachers and examining her own existence.
Clueless was filmed in Southern California over a 40-day schedule. Heckerling studied Beverly Hills High School students to understand how teenagers in the 1990s talked and learned some appropriate slang terms from them.
The film grossed $88 million worldwide, and was further successful in the home video market. It has received positive reviews from critics and is considered to be one of the best teen films of all time. Clueless has developed a cult following and has a continuing legacy. The film was followed by a spin-off television sitcom and series of books.
Cher Horowitz, a stylish, popular, and good-natured teenager, lives in a Beverly Hills mansion with her wealthy father, Mel, a gruff litigator; her mother died during a liposuction procedure when Cher was a baby. She attends Bronson Alcott High School with her best friend Dionne Davenport, also stylish and from a wealthy family. Dionne has a long-term relationship with popular student Murray Duvall, though Cher believes Dionne should be dating more mature men.
Josh Lucas, the socially conscious son of Mel's ex-wife from a brief marriage, visits Cher and her father during a break from college. When Cher points out that they have not been linked by marriage for more than 5 years, Mel replies that he divorced his wife, not his stepson. Cher playfully mocks Josh's idealism while Josh teases Cher for her vanity, superficiality, and selfishness.
Initially receiving poor grades on her report card, Cher renegotiates her grades with her more lenient teachers but cannot budge the hard-grading Mr. Hall. To soften him up, Cher orchestrates a romance between Mr. Hall and the awkward Miss Geist. As a result, Hall relaxes his standards, allowing Cher to renegotiate the grade. After seeing the teachers' newfound happiness, Cher becomes enthusiastic about doing good deeds. Cher’s father professes that he is prouder of her negotiation skills than if she had actually earned her grades.
When a "clueless" transfer student named Tai Frasier arrives at the school, Cher decides to make Tai her next project. With Dionne’s help, Cher makes over Tai, giving her protegee confidence and style. When an amiable but clumsy skateboarding slacker Travis Birkenstock is attracted to Tai, who reciprocates, the social-status-conscious Cher tries to extinguish the attraction between Tai and the “unworthy” Travis. Instead Cher steers Tai towards handsome, popular student Elton Tiscia.
However, Elton has no interest in Tai and is instead interested in Cher, whom he tries to kiss in his car after a party in Sun Valley. When Cher rebuffs him, he leaves her in a parking lot out of spite, and she is mugged at gunpoint. With no money, her only choice is to call Josh to pick her up. Seeing Cher’s attempts at mentoring Tai and volunteering for charities, Josh realizes that despite her superficiality, she is sincere.
Fashion-conscious new student Christian Stovitz attracts Cher's attention and becomes her target for a boyfriend. When Cher goes to a party with Christian, Josh becomes protective, also attending the party, where he gallantly rescues Tai from harassment by obnoxious stoned partiers. Later inviting Christian to hang out watching a movie at her home, Cher tries to seduce him, but Christian deflects her advances and is distracted admiring the male actors in the film. Finally realizing that Christian is gay, Cher remains friends with him, approving his taste in art and fashion.
Cher's privileged life takes a negative turn when Tai's newfound popularity strains their relationship. Additionally, when Cher fails her driving test for the first time she cannot negotiate to change the result. Her mood is worsened when Tai confesses her feelings for Josh to Cher, asking Cher’s help in pursuing Josh. Jealous, though oblivious, Cher tells Tai that she is not right for Josh, and the two girls fall out.
Feeling "totally clueless," Cher reflects on her priorities and repeated failures to understand or appreciate the people in her life. Cher begins to help doing research on her father’s legal case along with Josh and they begin to bond. Pondering why she is bothered by Tai's romantic interest in Josh, Cher finally realizes that she is in love with him.
After her epiphany, Cher begins making awkward but sincere efforts to live a more purposeful life, including captaining the school's Pismo Beach disaster relief effort. She accepts an invitation from Travis to a skating tournament in Long Beach, where she reconciles with Tai, who now dates Travis.
Cher and Josh eventually realize their feelings for one another, culminating in a kiss. Sometime later, Cher attends the wedding of Mr. Hall and Miss Geist, which she and Josh attend as a couple, along with Dionne and Murray and Tai and Travis. Cher catches the wedding bouquet, and she and Josh embrace and kiss.
The idea for Clueless first originated as a television pilot in 1993. Writer and director Amy Heckerling said: "Twentieth Century Fox said they wanted a show about teenagers—but not the nerds. They wanted it to be about the cool kids. The most successful character in anything I'd ever done was Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times. People think that's because he was stoned and a surfer. But that's not it. It's because he's positive. So I thought, 'I'm going to write a character who's positive and happy.' And that was Cher." Heckerling, having read the Jane Austen novel Emma in college and loving the title character's positivity, decided to write the script around an Emma-like character, saying, "I started to think, 'What's the larger context for that kind of a 'nothing can go wrong' 'always looks through rose colored glasses' kind of girl? So I tried to take all the things that were in this sort of pretty 1800s world and see what would that be like if it was in Beverly Hills."
As research for the script, Heckerling sat in on classes at Beverly Hills High School to get a feel for the student culture, commenting, "...one thing I observed was these girls in a constant state of grooming." Ken Stovitz had become Heckerling's agent at the time and told her the script had the potential to be a feature film after he read it. The finished script, which was titled "No Worries", contained the main characters that would end up in the Clueless film. Twink Caplan, Heckerling's friend who had worked with her on past projects, said film executives at Fox were wary of the story being too female-oriented to appeal to a large enough audience. "It was obvious they didn't get it. They thought the script needed more boys in it. They were afraid that if they focused on girls, we wouldn't get any guys to see it. So it went into turnaround. It was dead", said Caplan.
Six months later, the script found its way to producer Scott Rudin, who gave it his stamp of approval. Rudin's support led to increased interest in the script, and it became the subject of a bidding war between studios which was eventually won by Paramount Pictures. Heckerling was excited, as Paramount owned several major youth-centered television channels, such as MTV and Nickelodeon, which were suited to the film's target demographic.
Heckerling first saw Alicia Silverstone in the Aerosmith music video for "Cryin'" and kept her in the back of her mind for the role of Cher. When the film was still in development at Fox, executives suggested Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, Tiffani Thiessen, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie for the part. Heckerling met with Reese Witherspoon, who already had a few film roles to her credit. Though Silverstone only had the thriller The Crush as her previous film, the studio did not pressure Heckerling to cast big stars, and Silverstone ultimately won the role of Cher. Ben Affleck and Zach Braff auditioned for the role of Josh. Sarah Michelle Gellar was offered the role of Amber Mariens but turned it down due to her commitments to All My Children, while Zooey Deschanel auditioned for the role of Amber as well. Lauryn Hill auditioned for the role of Dionne, which eventually went to Stacey Dash.
Seth Green auditioned for the role of Travis and Alanna Ubach was considered for the role of Tai. Terrence Howard and Dave Chappelle were considered for the role of Murray. Jeremy Renner and Jamie Walters auditioned for the role of Christian, and Jerry Orbach and Harvey Keitel were considered for the role of Cher's father, Melvin Horowitz.
The character of Wendell Hall, played by Wallace Shawn, was inspired by a real-life debate teacher at Beverly Hills High School and a friend of Heckerling's. Prior to full-time acting, Shawn had been a teacher and drew on his experience for his portrayal of Mr. Hall.
Principal photography for the film began on November 21, 1994, and consisted of a 40-day filming schedule. Brittany Murphy, who was 17 at the time, required a parent or guardian present during filming.
Scenes depicting the fictional Bronson Alcott High School campus including the tennis courts, outdoor cafeteria, and the quad were filmed at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Ulysses S. Grant High School in Valley Glen provided filming locations for the school's interior sets. Other notable filming locations include the former Westside Pavilion shopping mall, Circus Liquor in North Hollywood, where Cher is mugged in her designer dress, and Rodeo Drive, featured in Cher's "crisis" scene as she dejectedly wanders around after a failed driver's test and a confrontation with Tai.
The Mighty Mighty Bosstones performance, originally an outdoor event, had to be moved inside due to rain. Paul Rudd bought everyone gifts after filming wrapped.
Mona May did the costume designing for the film. The iconic plaid set worn by Cher Horowitz in the film was "a nod to a Catholic schoolgirl uniform, but taken to another level and, turned designer." Cher wore several designer clothes ranging from Azzedine Alaïa to Anna Sui. The "underwear" Calvin Klein dress worn by Cher was actually designed by Sui who, at the time, was an emerging designer. Calvin Klein was credited due to more brand recognition during the time.
The film became a surprise sleeper hit of 1995. Clueless opened in 1,653 theaters on July 19, 1995, and grossed $10,612,443 on its opening weekend, which led to a ranking of second at the US box office behind Apollo 13. The film grossed $56,631,572 during its theatrical run in the United States and Canada, becoming the 32nd-highest-grossing film of 1995. Internationally, it grossed $31 million for a worldwide total of $88 million. The box office success brought the then-largely unknown Silverstone to international attention and earned her a $10 million, multi-picture deal with Columbia TriStar. The film developed a strong cult following after its release.
The film was well received by critics. On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 81% based on reviews from 120 critics, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "A funny and clever reshaping of Emma, Clueless offers a soft satire that pokes as much fun at teen films as it does at the Beverly Hills glitterati." On Metacritic, the film has a 71 out of 100 rating based on 18 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars. Janet Maslin of The New York Times noted, "Even if Clueless runs out of gas before it's over, most of it is as eye-catching and cheery as its star." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone contrasted the film to a more adult-oriented movie about teenagers released around the same time, Kids, stating, "The materialism in Clueless is almost as scary as the hopelessness in Kids", but concluded Clueless is "wicked good fun to be had [and] Silverstone is a winner."
Clueless won the award for Best Screenplay at the National Society of Film Critics Awards and Alicia Silverstone won the award for Breakthrough Performance from the National Board of Review. The film was nominated for a WGA Award for Best Screenplay. The film was nominated for four MTV Movie Awards, winning for Best Female Performance and Most Desirable Female for Silverstone. Silverstone won the award for Funniest Actress in a Motion Picture at the American Comedy Awards.
In 2008, Entertainment Weekly selected Clueless as one of the "New Classics", a list of 100 best films released between 1983 and 2008; Clueless was ranked 42nd. That year, the publication also named it the 19th-best comedy of the past 25 years. The film is ranked as number 7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 best high school films.
Clueless is a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel Emma, and many of its characters have counterparts in the novel.
Clueless was released on VHS and LaserDisc on December 19, 1995, by Paramount Home Video. It ended up in the top 20 for both video rental and video sales for 1996 in the United States. It was released on DVD on October 19, 1999. The special features solely included two theatrical trailers.
The film was reissued in a special 10th-anniversary "Whatever! Edition" DVD on August 30, 2005. The new issue included featurettes and cast interviews, including:The Class of '95 (a look at the cast), Creative Writing (Amy Heckerling talks about the script), Fashion 101 (how filmmakers invented the trendsetting style of Clueless), Language Arts (the director and cast members give facts on the groundbreaking slang and how Clueless revived Valspeak slang), Suck and Blow (how to play the game depicted in the Sun Valley party scene), Driver's Ed, We're History (stories from cast and crew of Clueless), and two theatrical trailers.
It was released on Blu-ray on May 1, 2012. Special features from the "Whatever! Edition" of 2005 were carried over to the Blu-ray and included a new trivia track.
After the death of Brittany Murphy, Silverstone stated that she "always felt connected to [Murphy] as [they] shared a very special experience in [their] lives together", and said, "I loved working with Brittany. She was so talented, so warm, and so sweet."
Heckerling later described Silverstone as having "that Marilyn Monroe thing" as a "pretty, sweet blonde who, in spite of being the American ideal, people still really like."
The surviving cast reunited in October 2012 for an issue of Entertainment Weekly.
Heckerling later reunited with both Silverstone and Wallace Shawn for the 2012 vampire comedy film Vamps.
The film was well known for the characters' catchphrases and vocabulary. Cher's verbal style is also marked by ironic contrasts between current slang and historical references, such as when she compares Tai to "those Botticelli chicks".
The film also had a strong influence on fashion trends. Fashion as a form of self-expression played an important role in the narrative and character development of the film, television series, and novels, which are topics examined by academic Alice Leppert.
Donatella Versace's fall 2018 collection was influenced by Clueless.
Clueless was the main inspiration for Australian rapper Iggy Azalea's music video for her 2014 song "Fancy" featuring Charli XCX. Many visuals and costumes inspired by the film were used in the video, which is filled with remakes of Clueless scenes. The outfits are also reinvented to channel the famous stylings of the film with a slightly modern edge. "Fancy" was shot in the same Los Angeles high school where Clueless was filmed. A June 2018 episode of Lip Sync Battle featured Silverstone miming to "Fancy", wearing Cher's yellow plaid skirt suit.
A reference to Cher's seduction of Christian is included in the music video for Simone Battle's "He Likes Boys" (2011).
In the second episode of the second season of the BBC America thriller series Killing Eve, "Nice and Neat" (2019), the Russian assassin Villanelle calls her agency and uses the codename Cher Horowitz to secretly inform her boss she is in trouble and needs to be rescued after being kidnapped.
A 2020 Discover Card commercial featured a clip from the film consisting of Cher Horowitz saying her famous phrase "Uh! As if!".
In 2023, Silverstone once again reprised the role of Cher Horowitz in a commercial for Rakuten which debuted during Super Bowl LVII.
In 1996, the producers created a spin-off television series, which followed parallel storylines of Cher and her friends. Several cast members from the film went on to star in the series, with the notable exceptions of Silverstone and Rudd, whose film careers had begun to take off. Silverstone was replaced in the series with actress Rachel Blanchard.
In October 2019, it was announced that CBS would be adapting the film into a drama series. The series is said to be centered around Dionne Davenport after Cher goes missing, and is described by Deadline Hollywood as a "baby pink and bisexual blue-tinted, tiny sunglasses-wearing, oat milk latte and Adderall-fueled look at what happens when the high school queen bee Cher disappears and her lifelong number two Dionne steps into Cher's vacant Air Jordans." On August 14, 2020, it was moved to NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock. In May 2021, it was reported that the series would not be moving forward at Peacock and instead would be redeveloping at CBS Studios.
Simon Spotlight Entertainment spun off a collection of paperback books from 1995 to 1999 aimed at adolescent readers.
In 2015, to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary, pop culture writer Jen Chaney published a book titled As If!: The Oral History of Clueless. The book is based on exclusive interviews with Heckerling, Silverstone, and other cast and crew members. Excerpts from the book were published in Vanity Fair.
A comic book series was launched in 2017.
Clueless: The Musical opened in New York City on December 11, 2018, as part of The New Group's 2018–2019 season. The show was written by Heckerling and starred Dove Cameron as Cher and Dave Thomas Brown as Josh. It closed on January 12, 2019.
The musical was a jukebox musical featuring pop songs from the 1990s, though with lyrics mostly or entirely rewritten by Heckerling to fit the storyline. Songs adapted from the film's soundtrack included "Supermodel" and "Kids in America".
A new stage adaptation of Clueless opened at the Trafalgar Theatre in London’s West End in February 2025. Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, the production features a book by Amy Heckerling, music by KT Tunstall, and lyrics by Glenn Slater. Emma Flynn stars as Cher, alongside Keelan McAuley (Josh), Chyna-Rose Frederick (Dionne), and Romona Lewis-Malley (Tai).
The Clueless CD-ROM is an activity and mini game collection based on the Clueless film and television series released by Mattel Media in 1997 for Microsoft Windows and Macintosh. The CD-ROM is intended for girls age 8 and up, and includes a soundtrack, trivia, makeover and dress-up activities, and six video games.
Paramount announced in 2008 that they would release video games based on their films Clueless, Mean Girls, and Pretty in Pink. The games were planned to be released on both the PC and the Nintendo DS, but only the PC games were released. Clueless on PC was released in 2009. The cancelled Nintendo DS video game was found by YouTuber Ray Mona, and a full play-through of the game was released on her channel on April 1, 2021.
In 2017, Episode launched an interactive animated web story based on the film.