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Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Widescreen Special Edition)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Widescreen Special Edition)

List Price: $19.98
Your Price: $14.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Unapologetic, pure 80's fun!
Review: Amazingly accurate, dead on portrayal of high school life circa 1982. Jennifer Jason Leigh is wonderful, Judge Reinhold and Sean Penn have some of the best lines in cinematic history, and the guy who played Damone (what's his name, anyway?) is a riot. Favorite lines: "This shyness routine is really starting to aggravate me." "Hey, I found your wallet. Want it back?" "The Attitude dictates that you don't care whether she comes, stays, lays or prays. Whatever happens, your toes are still tappin." "That was my skull! I'm so wasted!" "Hey, there's no birthday party for me here!" "Doesn't anybody #@*%! knock?" (who could forget that scene?) "Not bad for a high school boy." "What are you people, on dope?" "Awesome! Totally awesome! All right Hamilton!" I could go on forever with this one. Great soundtrack...I can't hear Jackson Browne's "Somebody's Baby" without thinking of that scene where Stacy loses her virginity. The book that the movie was based on is also worth checking out, if you can find it. It is even funnier than the movie, if that's possible. "Learn it! Know it! Live it!"

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Spiccoli makes this movie worthwhile!
Review: Awesome! Totally awesome! A lot of laughs with a little drama, but that makes the movie. It is a movie about friendship and crushes, love and hate. Sean Penn makes the movie playing a stoned surfer named Jeff Spiccoli. Filled with fast food, fast girls, fast cars, fast laughs, it is Fast Times at Ridgemont High!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Ultimate High School Classic
Review: Fast Times At Ridgemont High is a monumental film for a lot of people. I was 3 or 4 when it came out, but this film would still work and ring true to people my age in this modern day and time. That's why this film is completely timeless. The premise is pretty simple. It's about a bunch of high school kids in the early 80's dealing with everyday life, which includes girls, boys, sex, drugs, sex, and, oh, did I mention sex?. After watching this hilarious and downright touching film, you wonder why Phoebe Cates isn't a bigger star. Her famous scene(not for children)is classic and the fantasy of every red blooded American male in the country. Sean Penn gives one of comedy's most memorable characters as stoner Jeff Spicolli. He is brilliant in this film. There has not been another teen/school movie like this that is as special or classic. There have been a few that came close. The rest of the cast is great: Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Forrest Whitaker, Ray Walston. This is a great film. A true comedy classic!.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: "Fast Times" Is Awesome..............Totally Awesome
Review: Fast Times At Ridgemont High is an awesome......totally awesome movie! Everything is great! I just watched it and I feel like watching it again. Everything from Sean Penn and his pizza delivery, or Phoebe Cates coming out of the pool, to Judge Reinhold in the bathroom. Everything in this movie is cool. This is one of those movies that you get your friends together and watch. My favorite characters have to be Mike, Rat, and, of course, Sean Penn as the stoned surfer, Jeff Spicoli. Sean Penn had the best lines for this entire movie. I also liked Brad Hamilton. He was a great brother and funny (100% Guaranteed Breakfast). Stacy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Linda (Phoebe Cates) are two very hot people! You'll get to see. Who can't forget the pool scene? The soundtrack rocks too. There are so many great songs! This movie is gnarly!

Overall, I loved this movie. It was hilarious, funny, and dramatic at the same time. Parents must be warned though. This movie was originally rated X, but they cut down some scenes (in the shed, the baseball dugout).

Rated R for strong nudity, strong sexual content, drug use, and brief strong language.

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Dice

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good Times
Review: Fast Times At Ridgemont High is Cameron Crowe's first foray into the movie industry. He started out (as chronicled in Almost Famous) as a teenage reporter for Rolling Stone. After he left the magazine, he posed as a high schooler in a Southern California high school. The result was a book that was turned into this movie. Mr. Crowe wrote the screenplay and Amy Heckerling directed. The movie follows several different students and is one of the funniest movies ever made. Sean Penn stars as the stoner surfer Jeff Spicoli who only goal in life is to find some tasty waves and keep a cool buzz. His history professor, Mr. Hand (played with menacing glee by the late Ray Walston), provides an adversary for Spicoli to go up against. Judge Reinhold & Jennifer Jason-Leigh play brother & sister, Brad & Stacy. Brad is a senior who seems to have it all, cool car, good job at a burger joint and a perfect girlfriend. All of this collapses on him as his girlfriend breaks up with him, he's fired from his job and is forced to work a couple of embarrassing jobs. Stacy is a freshman and works at a pizza place in the mall (which is the center of alot of activity in the film) with the world wise Linda (played by Phoebe Cates). Linda is constantly giving advice to the naive Stacy. She meets an older guy and in one of the more poignant moments in the film, loses her virginity to him in a baseball dugout. Mark Ratner works at the movie theater in the mall and has a crush on Stacy. His friend, Mike Damone (played by Robert Romanus) is a hustler who scalps tickets to concerts and he, like Linda to Stacy, gives advice to "Rat". Stacy and Rat eventual go out, but Damone ends up sleeping with Stacy. A whole mess ensues, but in the end, every one makes up. The movie was a springboard to the careers of Mr. Penn, Ms. Cates, Ms. Leigh and Mr. Reinhold and is riff with future stars in small roles including Nicholas Cage, Anthony Edwards, Eric Stoltz & Forrest Whitaker. The movie has a great soundtrack and is a perfect snapshot of the fashions, trends and lives of teenagers in the early 80's. But throw away the different hairstyles, clothes, slang and music, the situations that the kids get into are the same for any generation and we can all relate.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Sporadically Funny, but not the end-all be-all
Review: Fast Times at Ridgemont High, although sporadically funny and well-acted, never really goes anywhere and leaves its characters undeveloped.

I laughed in this movie quite frequently. Never were they big laughs, but there were certain situations and lines that were quite funny. However, the audience never gets a feel for any of the chracters, because they're not really characters at all, just steretypes. There's the token black guy, there's the nerd, the virginal-but-curious girl, the stoner dude, the sexually-knowledgeable girl who mentors the virginal girl, the sexually-knowledgeable guy who mentors the nerd, etc. Although the acting was solid, especially Sean Penn as the stoner surfer dude (especially funny in the wake of his solemn performances in Mystic River and 21 Grams) and Jennifer Jason Leigh, it's hard to identify with these people. In addition, the movie feels very rushed; we've barely been introduced to the characters and they're graduating, and never really attempts at a plot, instead showing how several characters experience a year of high school. 5.5/10

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Why was this released?
Review: First off, I love this movie. It's one of my favorite movies of all time and I thought the first dvd release was excellent. This dvd has the same exact special features as that one. So why do we need this "special edition"? So that Universal studios can make more money because they believe that no one will buy it unless it's a new release. To me there is no point in doing a re-release if nothing but the sound changes from the previous edition.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Another FT ripoff - still no no missing scenes restored!
Review: I can't believe the director of this movie keeps standing for the out and out censorship of this! It's (at least) the third release of it on DVD, and this latest (Nov. 2004) try is still a dud. Sure it cleaned up the flatter-sounding audio of 2.0, but if you don't have an expensive 5.1 sytem, who cares?

But the big problem remains the scenes which they only include in the cable TV versions of this, but keep cutting from the DVD. Why? One of the missing scenes is a very cool safe sex/birth control scene in the mall, for instance. Fast Times sticks out as one of the very rare films that this odd censorship has been performed on. In fact, out of thousands of releases since DVDs started in 1995, this is almost the only one this has happened to. So again we can only ask why? WHY?







Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Where are the deleted scenes?
Review: I first saw this movie when I was in 9th grade. I loved it. Over the past 21 years I have watched it many times. I practically have it memorized. It is a true classic. When they released this version I thought for sure they would have the deleted scenes that were only shown on the cable tv version. I was very upset. I have only seen the deleted scenes one time. I wanted to see them again. Why even release this movie again without the deleted scenes? I don't understand. Sure there is some different commentary. But, the movie is the exact same as before. Releasing it again the way they did this time is just a waste of time.

Chad Smalley

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Don't let the 5.1 audio fool you.
Review: I was excited when I read that this movie was being re-released with 5.1 audio because the original mono version just didn't cut it.

Basically what you're getting here is a center dialog channel and a left/right music channel in the front. The rear channels are practically non-existent, except for a few sound effects like distant dogs, etc. And the music is often too loud for the dialog channel.
However, it is nice to hear these songs in stereo.

Also in comparison with the original release is the menus and extras. Almost identical with both versions of this DVD. I hoped with the new release (as I had with the original release a few years ago) that some deleted scenes and the scenes that appear in the TV version of the film would show up as extras. But again they were left out.

Summary: If you already own this movie in the mono form, you might want to keep it. The upgrade isn't very substantial. Wait for the Super Deluxe Party Edition, or whatever they're going to call the re-re-re-reissue of the movie. Maybe it will truly be worth the upgrade.


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