Stop everything! There's going to be a remake of Clueless
- Posted by
- Hannah-Rose Yee
- Published
Are you ready to roll with the homies all over again?
The Hollywood reboot machine has struck again. Its latest victim? Clueless.
A remake of the 1995 classic high school movie starring Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy and Paul Rudd is currently in development at Paramount, reports Deadline. Marquita Robinson, one of the writers on Netflix’s Glow is writing a script while Girls Trip’s screenwriter Tracy Oliver is producing. (Oliver is also currently writing the remake of The First Wives Club).
The Clueless reboot will join more than 120 movies and television shows currently in production in Hollywood that are remakes of beloved classic pop culture properties, mostly from the eighties and nineties.
Right now, there are reboots of What Women Want, The Craft, Charlie’s Angels, Dune and Ace Ventura all in the works.
Are you ready for 21st century versions of Cher, Amber and Dionne?
How do we all feel about this news? We’re pretty torn. While it’s exciting to think about the prospect of revisiting an iconic story from our childhoods, we can’t help but feel like this is a classic case of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Clueless is iconic for a reason. Not only is it one of the best high school movies ever made, giving us a lovable Queen Bee in Cher (Silverstone), it’s also one of the best Jane Austen adaptations, appropriating the story of Emma and transporting it perfectly to Nineties-era Los Angeles.
The movie is packed full of quotable dialogue - “As if!”, “She’s a full-on Monet!” and, the most memorable line, “You’re a virgin who can’t drive”. It introduced us to Alicia Silverstone and, tragically, a young and luminous Brittany Murphy in one of her earliest roles. Plus it continues to remind us that the eternally ageless Paul Rudd must be keeping a portrait in his attic.
And let’s not forget that it introduced us to matching tartan ensembles, baby pink everything and Azzedine Alaia, such a “totally important” designer that if you were wearing one of his dresses you shouldn’t get on the ground, even if someone is trying to rob you.
Has a movie wardrobe ever been this memorable?
Our point is: Do we really need this Clueless remake, when the original is near-perfect?
Sure, on rewatch there are a few jokes that fall flat and a couple of Mel Gibson references that no doubt will be expunged from Robinson and Oliver’s new script. And is getting with your stepbrother - that’s not a spoiler, right? We all know how Clueless ends! - actually kind of weird?
But one key thing Clueless does is take its teenage characters seriously. This isn’t a movie that judges Cher, Dionne or Tai for having “direction to the mall”, not knowing where Kuwait is or thinking that there’s no need to learn how to park their cars because “everywhere you go has valet”.
Clueless looks at Cher with as much fondness as, ahem, her stepbrother Josh (Rudd) ends up looking at her. And that’s a deceptively tricky thing to pull off.
This remake has a lot to live up to…
Images: Getty