Critics reviews

With a soundtrack by the indie hipsters Summer Camp and narration by the former teen star Fairuza Balk (who, appropriately, was in Almost Famous), the film deep-mines those American high-school tropes, from bullying at the lockers and cold-shouldering in the cafeteria to panicking about the prom, and, of course, sexual awakening.

Charlie Lyne's documentary about modern teen movies is entertaining and insightful, but also scattergun in its approach.

One of the extraordinary things about Beyond Clueless is the reminder of all today’s A-list actors who started out as eerily, almost waxily young stars in teen films.

The most notable absence in Beyond Clueless, however, is of the teen movie blockbuster.... These choices will leave some teen movie fans out in the cold, but few could miss Lyne’s underlying love letter to the genre. For all of its frustrations, Beyond Clueless gives another, more grown-up, view of how Hollywood got its teenage kicks.

Beyond Clueless is a remarkable redressing of the cinema essay style of filmmaking, combining a brilliantly written and scholarly script with an intellectually stimulating – and not to mention incisively cathartic – approach.

Beyond Clueless may be messy in places but it’s also strange, occasionally disorienting and full of flashes of madness. Not unlike adolescence itself.

Intuitively echoing the moods, traditions and 90s indie soundtracks of this genre, Summer Camp’s original score is the cherry on top to this vibrant, funny and subversive analysis of post-John Hughes American teen movies – and films outside of that stereotype.

hrough witty editing, a hypnotic narration (by smoky-voiced cult teen star Fairuza Balk) and a hair-raising score (provided by Summer Camp), Lyne makes a compelling case that these candy-coloured teenage confections have dark, poisonous cores.

The narration-heavy film is laden with smartly chosen extracts, and while perhaps not quite as fun and frothy as the packaging suggests, it offers a smart analysis of the high school movie genre.

Lyne knows and loves his source material – despite, if not because of its flaws. His passion for the genre is evident and his theories are presented with a rigour that pays the films the respect he feels they deserve. It's an evident labour of love, but for an outsider, someone not as obsessed... Lyne's sincerity can feel alienating.