Remember working a menial job in fast food while being constantly distracted by your raging hormones and your inability to express yourself to the opposite sex? Fast Times at Ridgemont High remembers. Capturing a little slice of high school for some California teens, Fast Times chronicles a by-gone age, when teenagers were raised to be independent and had to figure out shit for themselves, like the consequences of being perpetually stoned or having unprotected sex. For a coddled, internet-addicted teen of the modern era, the freedom and misadventures of the Fast Times cast probably seem unbelievable. Parents really let their kids roam about without constant supervision? They drove their own cars? They had... sex!! Yes, people, this is an accurate depiction of the pre-internet adolescent experience. Although the Critic isn't as old as Sean Penn, I grew up in the late nineties and aughts, and we had a considerable amount of leeway. We also had to work so that we had spending money, because there were no such things as Netflix, smartphones, or X Box Live. Get the fuck off my lawn, Zoomers! You know you're getting old when you're waxing about the glory days as though you weren't as miserable as every other teenager. Fast Times features a great cast, including Sean Penn in his defining roll as Spicoli, a pot-brained jokester that just can't seem to catch a break from his History teacher. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Phobe Cates, and Judge Reinhold are other notable actors getting their big break, along with Forrest Whitaker as a football star. Unlike many other teen comedies, Fast Times features females characters with actual arcs, and although there's nudity, it's done in a realistic manner (other than, of course, Phobe Cates topless scene). Props to writer Cameron Crow for including an abortion plotline that doesn't moralize and judge. Highly recommended (Also, the soundtrack is sick).
The Critic has slowly been making his way through Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series The Wheel of Time for over two years, and I have some things to say about Amazon's television adaptation, which is currently in its second season. Jordon's series is incredibly long and very dense, and so it is understandable that the showrunners have decided to rearrange his various plotlines and trim certain sections and characters. However, the amount of rewriting that has went on is considerable, to the point where as a reader of the books, I am often legitimately surprised, albeit in a disappointing way. Great fantasy adaptations keep the spirit of what they're adapting: Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings isn't a perfect conversion of Tolkein's classic novels from print to screen, but the main story is intact, as are all of his themes. Similarly, the first five seasons of Game of Thrones very closely follow George R. R. Martin's books; only in the later seasons, when they ran out of material, did the show lose its focus. The Wheel of Time is more The Witcher than peak Game of Thrones. Like the Netflix show, The Wheel of Time just doesn't take its source material seriously enough to avoid offending book readers, many of whom have waited a long time for Jordan's novels to be adapted. Don't piss off the people who are guaranteed to at least check out your show, you fools! Season two is better so far, and the casting is good enough that I'll keep watching for a few more, but I can't help but conclude that it's a tragedy that the showrunners weren't more respectful of Jordan's work, which deserves a better treatment.
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