Fast Times at Ridgemont High · reception & legacy

1982 · Amy Heckerling

How Fast Times at Ridgemont High has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Dismissed by many 1982 critics as just another teen sex romp — Roger Ebert gave it one star — it's since been reappraised as the smartest, most humane film of its genre and entered the National Film Registry in 2005.

What's debated

Fans still argue over whether the film's poster-image raunch (that pool scene) betrays or disguises what's actually a frank, empathetic, female-directed movie about teenage girls' interior lives.

Its footprint

Spicoli ordering pizza to class and 'Aloha, Mr. Hand' are permanent teen-movie vocabulary, and the Phoebe Cates pool sequence — set to The Cars' 'Moving in Stereo' — may be the most parodied scene of the whole 1980s.

Where it stands

It's the foundational American teen movie — the 'you must have seen this' text that Clueless, Dazed and Confused, and every hangout high-school film gets measured against.

★ Did you know? Screenwriter Cameron Crowe, then a 22-year-old Rolling Stone journalist, went undercover as a student at a real San Diego high school for a year to research the book the film is based on — and the cast is stacked with pre-fame stars, including a teenage Nicolas Cage in his film debut, billed as 'Nicolas Coppola.'