My Favorite Adaptations: Clueless

Clueless represents a deviation from two trends in my personal book-to-movie adaptation m.o. - I saw the movie before reading the book it was based on, and I liked the movie more than the book.  Generally speaking, I'm a Jane Austen fan.  This past weekend I used time that should have been devoted to academic reading to reading Persuasion again, and it was positively delightful.  I have to say, though, that of her six novels, Emma is my least favorite.  It's a book at which I had to make more than one go - that is, the first time I started to read it I got bogged down midway through, such that when I finally picked it up again I had to start over from the beginning.  (This was my undoing with The Fellowship of the Ring.  Two tries have proved fruitless, and I seriously doubt that I have the fortitude to try again, although I do plan to see the movie someday.)  Of all Austen's heroines, I find Emma the least sympathetic and actually kind of annoying.  In fact, it's fair to say that I might never have made it through Emma if not for Clueless.

In an academic sense, I disapprove of Cliffs Notes, but I have to give Clueless credit for providing the basic plot/character outline that I needed to maintain my focus while reading Emma.  The film has just the right balance of adherence to the source material and updating, making it one of the best, if not the best, of the "classic-of-English-literature-updated-as-a-teen-movie" genre.*  Also: Paul Rudd being dreamy.  How can you lose?

*Other successes, in my opinion, would include Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, which is a visually stunning movie, and 10 Things I Hate About You, which is wittier and better-acted than some of its peers and still makes me laugh out loud.  A miss would be She's the Man, which is also funny, but mainly because it's kind of terrible and really highlights the massive suspension of disbelief that forms the heart of Twelfth Night.  It showcases perhaps the best use of Amanda Bynes' histrionic acting style that I've ever seen, but there is no point during the movie where it is at all believable that she's a boy.  Since these are based on plays, which come prepared to be staged, I'm not writing full posts about them.