Living above Sunset

If you decide it’s too hot to sit outside this weekend, watch Clueless and then Emma. I will admit I’m shallow I love Clueless. Like Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, it beautifully captures high school life in Beverly Hills. Years after seeing it, I was on a plane watching Jane Austen’s Emma, and I thought, “Boy, this is just like Clueless.” Of course, it’s the other way around. Heckerling based the characters and plot on Austen’s novel. Following the storyline of Emma, Cher works behind the scenes as a matchmaker, and caretaker of her father. She does a makeover on a new student, and like Emma, advises her to stay away from the man she should be with because he is beneath her social position. If you watch closely, you’ll notice how each plot point is updated and translated into 1990s Beverly Hills. Oh, and if you get Emma, get the 2009 BBC miniseries. There’s something cloying about the 1996 version.