Here’s the 411 on ‘Clueless’--It’s Smarter Than It Looks

In “Clueless,” pampered, hip, 16-year-old beauty Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) is knocked off her pedestal when she faces her first failures--her driver’s test, a heartthrob who turns out to be gay, a friend who steals her social crown--and falls in love. (Rated PG-13)

*

Judging by the feel-good smiles on the faces of boys, girls, older couples and even parents with adolescents who had just seen it, this sweet farce struck the funny bone of just about everyone who is, ever has been or wants to be a teen-ager.

For Erin Boler, 15, it was, “The way it shows a kid’s life, like. The stuff they wear. The way they talked.”

Those who don’t already speak the street slang of Rodeo Drive (a north-of-Sunset dialect of Valspeak) will by the end of this movie.

What does Cher think when high school boys approach her like slobbering dogs? As if !

Disgusted? What ever !

Good-looking girls are Bettys, good-looking guys are Baldwins, nerdy rejects are Barneys.

So, OK, it’s not exactly how kids talk at Erin’s high school. “But it’s funny,” she said.

Friends Erik Knuppel and Evan Moses, both 12, said their favorite line was “Here’s the 411 on this guy.”

The satirical twin of “Beverly Hills 90210,” the comedy lampoons the ubiquitous nose jobs, cellular phones on campus and girls who cut class to regain perspective at the mall.

But boys take their lumps too. In a voice-over, the obsessively groomed Cher tells us that she just doesn’t get the way boys dress today.

“They look like they just fell out of bed; take their greasy hair and put on a backwards cap and we’re supposed to swoon?”

Erik wasn’t offended. “It was from a girl’s perspective, and that’s to be expected,” he said, adding he doesn’t dress like that anyway.

He also laughed at Cher’s father, a $500-an-hour litigator who praised his daughter for successfully talking her teachers into raising her grades. “Honey,” he says, “I couldn’t be happier if they were based on real grades.”

Parents who were expecting humor on the level of “Dumb and Dumber” were surprised that several jokes were aimed at their generation and hit the mark. When Cher’s gay friend asks her if she likes Billie Holiday, she answers, “I love him!”

Unlike many teen flicks, this one is raunch-free. One party scene shows kids drinking and smoking dope, and sex is a matter-of-fact topic of concern for Cher’s friends Dionne (Stacey Dash) and Tai (Brittany Murphy). But Cher is an old-fashioned health-and-beauty nut, snubbing the “loadies,” exercising and saving herself for Luke Perry. Kids could do a lot worse for role models.

Alicia Silverstone as Cher is a total Betty, but as it turns out, said Erin, “she wasn’t as dumb as she really looked. She wanted to help others. She wasn’t just like a snob who only cared about herself. “

Buoyed by her success at fostering a romance between two nerdy teachers, Cher moves on to other good deeds, such as making over Tai (a grungy transfer from the East Coast) and sending her old skis to the Pismo Beach relief effort. Her final project is her own soul, which she nurtures by opening herself up to the best in her friends.

In the end, after matchmaking for her friends, Cher realizes she is in love with her own step-brother, a flannel-wearing, Nietzsche-reading Baldwin in a Barney suit.