Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) * * *

Directed by:  Amy Heckerling

Starring:  Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Robert Romanus, Eric Stoltz, Ray Walston, Brian Backer, Vincent Schiavelli, Forest Whitaker

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a welcome relief from crude teen movies where bodily fluids are ingested accidentally.    Yes, the teens in the movie engage in lots of sex and frank sexual talk, but it is relatively tame when seen today.    It is not a bad thing.    Fast Times also follows the trend of actors in their twenties playing teens.   But there are good actors here.   Some, like Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage (in a small role), and Forest Whitaker later became Best Actor Oscar winners.   Others, like Jennifer Jason Leigh and Judge Reinhold, became well-known character actors.    And then there is Ray Walston, the former My Favorite Martian who appears as Mr. Hand, who makes it his mission to take his revenge on stoner Jeff Spicoli (Penn) for wasting so much time in his history class.

Fast Times touches on teen issues such as sex, love, passing finals, drugs, entering the workforce, masturbation, and even abortion.     These are done more or less frankly and realistically.   These issues still exist today, along with the advent of social media, cyber bullying, and deadlier sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV, which was only in its early stages of discovery in 1982.  But dealing with teen pregnancy presents enough quandaries for an otherwise nice teen girl like Stacy Hamilton (Leigh), who has a fresh face and a winning smile.    Her older brother Brad (Reinhold) works and goes to school.   His longtime girlfriend breaks up with him and he resents having to wear humiliating outfits at his job.    He changes jobs as often as he changes underwear, but he seems to be jumping out to a head start in the working world.    ("You tell me the fun is over.  I'm waiting for the fun to start.").   Oh and he is the guy caught jerking off to Linda (Cates), of whom he fantasizes emerging from a swimming pool in a teeny red bikini.   

There is no plot, per se, just a series of interlocking situations and stories surrounding these teens.    Spicoli smokes lots of dope, barely passes class, and yearns to be a famous surfer.    Is there even such a thing outside of Point Break?    When asked about getting a job, Spicoli replies, "All I need are some cool buds and some tasty waves and I'm fine,"    That and pizza he orders to eat while in Mr. Hand's class.    

Other characters rounding at the cast include Mike Damone (Romanus), a ticket scalper who hooks up with Stacy even though his best friend Mark Ratner (Backus) likes her.    He gets her pregnant, but bails on her in her hour of need, forcing Linda to take action on Stacy's behalf.     Also showing up is linebacker Charles Jefferson (Whitaker), whose prized new car is crashed by his kid brother and Spicoli and, through some ingenuity on Spicoli's part, winds up taking out his frustration on a rival football team during a game.

The movie, 34 years later, maintains a certain innocence oddly enough.    Before teen comedies became raunchy, cynical spectacles, Fast Times actually tries to relate to its characters and make them identifiable.    Advice such as, "If you want to score with a chick, play the second side of Zeppelin IV," is dispensed by Damone, who barely knows what he is talking about himself.    One minor issue:   In the next scene, Ratner is playing Kashmir on his car stereo to impress Stacy, but Kashmir is on Physical Graffiti, not Zeppelin IV.    Some teens have a knack for not knowing what they are talking about, but somehow sounding convincing anyway.