Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Brad Hamilton is a popular senior at Ridgemont High School, a fictional school in the San Fernando Valley, and looks forward to his final year of school. He has a job at All-American Burger, his 1960 Buick LeSabre is almost paid for, and plans to break up with his girlfriend Lisa so he can be completely eligible during his senior year. After arguing with an unpleasant customer, Dennis Taylor fires Brad Hamilton after Brad threatened the customer with violence and used profanity. When Brad tries to tell Lisa how much he needs her, she informs him that she wants to break up with him to date other guys. Not having the nerve to beg for his job back, Brad gets a job at "Captain Hook Fish & Chips". He is sullen and withdrawn after his breakup with Lisa and the loss of his job at "All-American Burger" and is caught masturbating in the bathroom by Linda after he fantasizes about her exposing her breasts to him at the pool. Brad later quits "Captain Hook Fish & Chips" in humiliation when a beautiful older woman laughs at him wearing a pirate costume while making a food delivery.

Brad's sister Stacy is a 15-year-old freshman and a virgin. She works at Perry's Pizza at Ridgemont Mall alongside her outspoken older friend Linda Barrett. One night at work, Stacy takes an order from 26-year-old stereo salesman, Ron Johnson, who asks her out after she tells him she's 19. She later sneaks out of her house for a date with him and loses her virginity that night in the dugout of a baseball field. Stacy later tells Linda about the experience, stating how much it hurt. Linda offers advice to Stacy on the matter as the more worldly and experienced of the two. Ron sends her flowers the next day, but he quickly loses interest. Stacy is later asked out on a date by Mark "Rat" Ratner to a German restaurant. Afterwards, at her home, Stacy invites Rat into her bedroom, where they look at her photo album together. They begin to kiss, but a nervous Rat abruptly leaves after Stacy attempts to seduce him. She mistakenly interprets his shyness as disinterest. Linda quickly advises her to move on and find another boy. After he drops by her house unannounced while she and Linda are relaxing by the swimming pool, Stacy becomes interested in Damone. She invites him to her pool, which quickly leads to their having sex in the pool house during which he ejaculates very quickly.

Stacy later informs Damone that he has gotten her pregnant during a one-time bout of raging hormones between the two of them; he tells her she wanted sex more than he did, which she demands for him to take back, (which he does, reluctantly). She asks for him to cover half the cost of an abortion and provide her with a ride to the clinic, and he agrees. However, unable to come up with his half despite attempts to call in debts owed from his business dealings, Damone abandons Stacy on the day of her appointment. She lies and asks her brother Brad to drive her to a bowling alley to meet friends, but he sees her cross the street to the abortion clinic. Brad waits for Stacy and he confronts her about the abortion. Stacy makes Brad promise not to tell their parents, but does not divulge who got her pregnant.

Mike Damone is a smooth-talker who earns money taking sports bets and scalping concert tickets; he fancies himself a worldly ladies' man. His shy but amiable best friend Mark "Rat" Ratner works as an usher at the movie theater across from Perry's Pizza. When Rat develops a crush on Stacy, Damone lets Rat in on his five secrets for picking up girls. Damone later persuades Rat to ask Stacy out on a date to a German restaurant. Afterwards, at her home, Stacy invites Rat into her bedroom, where they look at her photo album together. They begin to kiss, but a nervous Rat abruptly leaves after Stacy attempts to seduce him. She mistakenly interprets his shyness as disinterest. Linda quickly advises her to move on and find another boy. After he and Damone drop by her house unannounced, Stacy becomes interested in Damone. She invites him to her pool, which quickly leads to them having sex in the pool house during which he ejaculates very quickly.

When Stacy tells Linda that Damone abandoned her and did not pay his half of her abortion, Linda becomes furious. The next day, Damone finds his car spray-painted "Prick" and his school locker painted "little prick" as revenge. Rat confronts Damone about his involvement with Stacy. They almost get into a fight, but their gym teacher breaks it up.

Jeff Spicoli is a carefree stoner and surfer who runs afoul of history teacher Mr. Hand and attending Mr. Vargas' science class. One night, Spicoli wrecks the 1981 Chevrolet Camaro of Ridgemont star football player Charles Jefferson during a joyride with Jefferson's younger brother. Spicoli covers up the damage by making it look like the car was destroyed by fans of Ridgemont's sports rival Lincoln High School. When Ridgemont plays Lincoln, Jefferson, furious about his car, brutally tackles several of Lincoln's players and almost single-handedly wins the game. Spicoli joins the science class of Mr. Vargas on a class trip to the hospital to learn about life from birth to death. On the evening of the graduation dance, Mr. Hand visits Spicoli's house and informs him that he must make up the eight hours of class time he has wasted over the school year. They have a history session that lasts until Mr. Hand is satisfied that Spicoli has understood the lesson, and the two show that they respect each other.

Rat makes peace with Damone. He later starts dating Stacy again. Brad takes a job at a convenience store called Mi-T-Mart and foils an armed robbery with some help from an oblivious Spicoli, who stumbles out of the bathroom in time to distract the robber.

A postscript states that Brad was promoted to manager of Mi-T-Mart. Damone was busted for scalping Ozzy Osbourne tickets and was forced to take a job at a 7-Eleven. Mr. Vargas has gone back to caffeinated coffee. Linda attends college in Riverside and moves in with her Abnormal psychology professor. Rat and Stacy are having a passionate love affair but are taking their romance slow and haven't gone all the way yet. Mr. Hand maintains his belief that everyone is on dope. Spicoli saved Brooke Shields from drowning and blew the reward money hiring rock band Van Halen to play at his birthday party.

As the credits roll, All-American Burger, Mi-T-Mart, and Ridgemont Mall close for the night.

The film is adapted from a book Cameron Crowe wrote after having spent a year at Clairemont High School in San Diego, California. He went undercover to do research for his 1981 book, Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, about his observations of the high school and the students that he befriended there, including then-student Andy Rathbone, on whom the character Mark "Rat" Ratner was modeled.[6]

Universal executives recommended David Lynch as a director, and Crowe met with Lynch. Though Lynch liked the idea, he passed on directing.[7] Producer Art Linson showed Crowe's script to Amy Heckerling, who at that point had directed only student films. Heckerling then met with Crowe, and the two began brainstorming different ideas for the film. Heckerling thought the book "had just such an amazing wealth of material" that could be incorporated more into the script."[7] She liked how much of the book's action is centered around a mall, and suggested featuring the mall setting even more prominently in the film.[7] Said Crowe, "Amy completely got it and we were up and running."[7]

Nicolas Cage made his feature-film debut, portraying an unnamed co-worker of Brad's at All-American Burger, credited as "Nicolas Coppola".[8] It was also the film debut for Eric Stoltz and provided early roles for Anthony Edwards and Forest Whitaker. Crowe's future wife, Nancy Wilson of Heart, has a cameo as the "Beautiful Girl in Car" who laughs at Brad in his Captain Hook uniform during a traffic-light stop.

Tom Hanks was considered for the role of Brad Hamilton.[9] Justine Bateman was offered the role of Linda Barrett, but she turned it down to star in Family Ties. Matthew Broderick was offered the role of Jeff Spicoli, but he turned it down.[7] Jodie Foster was considered for the role of Stacy Hamilton.[10] Jennifer Jason Leigh stated that she prepared for the role of Stacy by rereading her own high school diaries and letters, as well as taking a job at the Sherman Oaks Galleria Perry's Pizza restaurant for three weeks.[11]

Mall scenes were filmed at the Sherman Oaks Galleria during after hours.[7][11] Principal photography began on November 2, 1981, and lasted for a total of 8 weeks.[11] Scenes at Ridgemont High School took place at Van Nuys High School.[11]

Universal test-screened an early cut of the film in Orange County, California. Heckerling said feedback from audiences and the studio was worrying because "people were like, 'We teenagers are not like that,' 'You think all we care about is sex and drugs,' and blah, blah, blah. And we were worried that we would have to cut out a lot of stuff."[12] However, producer Linson, who maintained that conservative audiences in Orange County were not the film's target audience, ensured that no major cuts or edits were done.[7]

On its opening weekend, the film earned $2.5 million. The release was widened to 713 theaters, earning $3.25 million. The film ranked 29th among U.S. releases in 1982, earning $27.1 million,[22] six times its $4.5 million budget, and later gaining popularity through television and home video releases.[7]

Fast Times at Ridgemont High was released to DVD on December 21, 1999.[23] The DVD included audio commentary with Heckerling and Crowe, as well as the making-of documentary "Reliving Our Fast Times at Ridgemont High".[19] It was released on Blu-ray on January 10, 2012.[23] On May 11, 2021, a digitally restored 4K version was released on Blu-ray and DVD through The Criterion Collection.[24] The Criterion release restores Heckerling's original cut of the film.[20]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 78% of 60 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The website's consensus reads, "While Fast Times at Ridgemont High features Sean Penn's legendary performance, the film endures because it accurately captured the small details of school, work, and teenage life."[25] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[26]

On its initial release, multiple critics dismissed the film as just the latest in a wave of teensploitation films such as Porky's and The Last American Virgin.[20] Roger Ebert was highly critical of the film's vulgar humor and called it a "scuz-pit of a movie". Though he praised the performances of Leigh, Penn, Cates, and Reinhold, he lamented that Leigh's character is put through "humiliating" situations that he found degrading to young women.[27] In later years, Ebert reevaluated his opinion of the film and became a big supporter of Cameron Crowe's directorial career.[28] Richard Corliss of Time compared the film negatively to another teen coming-of-age movie, American Graffiti.[29] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that it was "a jumbled but appealing teen-age comedy with something of a fresh perspective on the subject."[30]

In contrast, LA Weekly praised the film, particularly its screenplay, direction, and the performances of Leigh and Penn. The review read, "While neither as slapstick as Animal House, nor as apocalyptic and biting as Over the Edge, Fast Times at Ridgemont High is both serious and funny enough to hold its own in their company."[31] The review added the film presents "a portrait of modern school life that speaks lightly but truly to the fears and trials of post-Watergate teens".[31]

Speaking on earlier negative reactions to the film due to the sexual content, Heckerling said, "The whole theme, of even the title, is things are going too fast for young people. They shouldn't have to worry so much about sex at such an early age."[21]

As time went on, however, the film was increasingly seen as a classic. In an essay written for the Criterion Collection edition in 2021, critic Dana Stevens wrote, "Fast Times is the polar opposite of exploitation. Deep in its horny heart, this is the story of one fifteen-year-old girl's clumsy and sometimes painful introduction to the world of sex, related without judgment or preconception or the least hint of sentimentalization. Heckerling's film is a raunchy crowd-pleaser replete with stoner humor, a masturbation gag, and a blow-job tutorial that makes use of school-cafeteria carrots. But it is also attuned to the emotional lives of teenagers—girls and boys—in ways that place it far ahead of its time."[20]

The film is considered notable for foregrounding its young female characters as having agency. In Collider, Grace Neave noted that in teen comedy films like Porky's, the women are typically objectified and are chased after by the male characters; however, in Fast Times, Stacy and Linda are fully formed characters that also pursue the guys.[32] Neaves added that unlike most teen comedies of its time, which tended to "encourage misogyny as a comical gag", "Stacy's enthusiasm about sex is never shamed or used as a plot point to cast judgment over her character."[32]

Fast Times has also received praise for its realistic depiction of the abortion scene, foregoing judgement or moralizing about the act itself and instead focusing on Damone's failure to support Stacy.[20][32][33][34] Of Heckerling's decision to depict the scene, Crowe later said, "She said 'you know what, this is life. I want to shoot this like life.' She just quietly did it, and in an almost European way, she put this young girl's life onscreen in a way for you to judge — this is just how life is. And it meant a lot when she did it at the time, and it still means a lot. It was a very courageous thing to do, and it actually is the one thing about the movie that I'm probably happiest about at this point."[28]

For the film's 40th anniversary in 2022, critic Richard Roeper said that out of all the raunchy teen comedies of the 1980s, Fast Times "continues to resonate as a substantial time capsule of the period, capturing the music, the fashions, the attitudes and the social mores of the time", and called it "the best ribald teen comedy ever made."[33]

Crowe's screenplay was nominated for a WGA Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium.[35] The film ranks No. 15 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies"[36] and No. 2 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "50 Best High School Movies".[37]

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

• 2000: AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs – #87[38]

National Film Preservation Board

• 2005: National Film Registry, Fast Times at Ridgemont High[4]

The film inspired a short-lived 1986 television series titled Fast Times. Ray Walston and Vincent Schiavelli reprised their roles as Hand and Vargas on the show. Other characters from the movie were played by different actors, most notably Patrick Dempsey as Mike Damone.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as a fundraiser for CORE (Community Organized Relief Effort), a nonprofit charity co-founded by Sean Penn, a table read was organized for the film.[39] After the table read, Cameron Crowe and Amy Heckerling hosted a discussion about the film.