Fast Times at Ridgemont High

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

🎙️ EPISODE 550: 09.08.22 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 25. Nicolas Cage is nothing but a glorified extra in this, his first feature film performance. He has no lines of dialogue and appears in the background of a handful of scenes, most notably when Brad is getting fired from the burger joint (see gif below). As far as the movie is concerned, I have no qualms if this is an all-time classic in your book. It doesn't quite hit the mark for me, but it's an incredibly enjoyable watch and an important film in a lot of ways (how the abortion sequence is handled — normally and without a whiff of moral ambiguity — is a big one). It might be blasphemy to state it, but the whole Spicoli/Mr. Hand plot is super overrated imo. We get it. He's a stoner surfer dude and he's a hard-ass old school teacher. It's a one-note joke played as the second most important storyline. Ultimately, because of this and other reasons, there's a real pacing issue in this one.

There isn't really a climax. Some of the characters have arcs, others don't. The fall of Judge Reinhold's character and Jennifer Jason Leigh's "coming of age" drama are really the only interesting things (they also give the best performances). I went ahead and did a ranking (on the fly) for the podcast of the Top 25 Characters and have posted those results below.

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕋𝕠𝕡 𝟚𝟝 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕤/ℙ𝕖𝕣𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝔽𝕒𝕤𝕥 𝕋𝕚𝕞𝕖𝕤 𝕒𝕥 ℝ𝕚𝕕𝕘𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕟𝕥 ℍ𝕚𝕘𝕙
25 DW Brown as Ron Johnson (pedophile)
24 CAGE
23 Pamela Springsteen as ??? (cheerleader maybe)
22 Robert Romanus as Damone
21 Kelli Maroney as Cindy, friend of JJL and Phoebe Cates
20 Vincent Schiavelli as nerdy science teacher Mr. Vargas
19 Amanda Wyss as Brad's girlfriend
18 Tom Nolan as manager who fires Brad
17 Scott Thomson as "business man" who gets Brad fired
16 Sean Penn as Spicoli
15 Anthony Edwards as Spicoli's stone buddy
14 Eric Stolz as Spicoli's stone buddy
13 Ray Waltson as Mr. Hand
12 Stuart Cornfield as Brad's friend who inadvertently gets him fired because he has to go to the bathroom
11 Forest Whitaker as the football player
10 Brian Backer as Rat
9 Douglas and Steven Martin as the angry twins
8 Lana Clarkson as Mr. Vargas's wife
7 Stanley Davis Jr. as Forest Whitaker's little brother
6 James Russo as the robber who Brad throws a pot of coffee at
5 Phoebe Cates as Linda
4 James Bolt as Greg (gaunt punk-looking dude who is in the background a lot, image below)
3 Jennifer Jason Leigh as Stacy
2 Judge Reinhold as Brad
1 Taylor Negron as the pizza guy who delivers a pie to Mr. Hand's classroom (clip below)



THE VERDICT: 9 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 549 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 551 ⫸

---

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is a 1982 American coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Amy Heckerling (in her feature directorial debut), from a screenplay by Cameron Crowe, based on his 1981 book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story. Crowe went undercover at Clairemont High School in San Diego and wrote about his experiences. It was released on August 13, 1982.