The poster sold the stoned kid; the movie is jobs and a pregnancy it won't cheer.
The review
Forget the poster for a minute. A reporter spent a year undercover at a high school, and the film keeps mall jobs, a teacher, and a pregnancy. It does not celebrate the abortion. One boy is kind and one is not. That is more life than the stoned surfer the ads froze in place.
Adult, and it should stay that way. Tell a teenager which story this actually is before you press play. The work and the pregnancy are the book. The surfer is the souvenir people kept. If you only want the souvenir, you will miss the part where a job and a pregnancy already carry a bill the movie refuses to cheer.
Groundhog Day is still a comedy film, and it scores 69 instead of 58. What you gain is temperance: Appetite is burned out of him.
The eight
8
Industry
Mall jobs and a teacher are the work the poster forgot.
6
Household
A pregnancy is in the story, and the film does not cheer the abortion.
6
Piety
A kind boy and an unkind one are not treated as the same.
5
Courage
A reporter stayed a year; the kind boy is not the poster.
5
Republic
A school, a mall, and a teacher make a town that has stakes.
4
Temperance
The stoned surfer is the souvenir; the film itself keeps a bill.
7
Truth
The poster lies about which story this movie actually is.
5
Stewardship
What remains is work and a pregnancy, if you look past the mascot.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · Fast Times at Ridgemont High · 58IMDb
Live HistoricSee what matters.
Film · Columbia · 1959
Pass it on
Anatomy of a Murder
58Watch it awake.
Adults. The courtroom is the work. What happened and what can be proved are not the same fact.
The review
A soldier shoots a bar owner and says the man raped his wife. A former prosecutor who now fishes more than he practices takes the defense. I am not going to describe the testimony. In 1959 the testimony itself was the scandal, because a courtroom in an American film was asked to say out loud what a trial of this kind has to say. The lawyer is good at the saying. He is also having a good time, and the film lets you see the good time, which is the correction inside the craft.
Adults. A house does not need this as a primer. A house that wants one picture of how a verdict is made, rather than how a villain confesses, can use it. Ask, at the end, what the jury was allowed to know and what the rooms already knew. Those are different piles. The decade's more famous courtroom hours snap the case shut with a witness who breaks. This one is more honest about the gap, and less honest about whether the lawyer is a man to admire. Admire the proceeding. Decline the grin.
