Clueless mystery drama TV reboot is met with scorn

W Magazine

Amy Heckerling's acclaimed 1995 teen movie Clueless is "one of the greatest American comedy of manners films of the past few decades," says Kyle Munzenrieder. "So why would a television network consider rebooting the film as a television series that drops both the comedy and the manners?" The potential mystery drama series revolving around the Dionne character that Deadline describes as "Mean Girls meets Riverdale meets a Lizzo music video" sounds, according to Munzenrieder, "more Riverdale and Euphoria mixed with Gone Girl than it does like anything resembling Clueless's Jane Austen roots." Munzenrieder adds: "Giving the Twin Peaks-light dramatic reboot to existing intellectual property has been all the rage in teen TV since at least since the surprise success Riverdale, the TV show that gave clean-cut comic book icon Archie a set of six pack abs and problems like affairs with his teacher. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Nancy Drew, and Charmed are all on the air. Reboots of Gossip Girl, Lizzie McGuire, and even Grease are now in the works. Though, an attempt to bring Heathers, an already dark teen cult classic, not only flopped but proved needlessly controversial. Clueless was a series that set pop culture trends, rather than followed them. So it kind of hurts to see the film re-purposed to follow trends both in network programming and teen culture...Heckerling's original also seemed particularly uninterested in framing Cher in the tired trope of 'most popular girl in school' and it seems forced to place Dionne as her 'number two.' Typical signifiers of popularity like prom queen campaigns, cheerleader tryouts, or student body elections are absent from the film."

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• Clueless reboot is an insult to the movie's fans: "Cher wearing Air Jordans? In her immortal words: As if," says Ashley Reese. "Clueless is a near-perfect ’90s teen film that was so indicative of its era, and jamming it into 2020 is an insult. What is Clueless without the flannel, block heeled Mary Janes, and the Cranberry’s CD left in the quad? It’s not Clueless."
• Clueless fans are particularly peeved with how the reboot is described: Not every new teen show needs to be Riverdale!
• Clueless reboot description reads like "Old Man Executive 'How Do You Do Fellow Kids' Mad Libs"
• The reboot sounds like a tech startup writing a job listing
• Clueless reboot panders to millennials in the bleakest way possible