In this adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. Alicia Silverstone plays this late 20th century version of Emma Woodhouse, who has been given the new name of Cherilyn "Cher" Horowitz. Cher is a good-natured but superficial girl who is attractive, popular, and extremely wealthy. A few months shy of her sixteenth birthday, she has risen to the top of the high school social scene. She lives in a Beverly Hills mansion with her father Mel, a ferocious $500-an-hour litigator, her mother died from a freak accident during a routine liposuction procedure when Cher was a baby. Cher's best friend is Dionne Davenport, who is also rich, pretty, and hip, and understands what it's like to be envied. Though Dionne has a long-term relationship with popular student Murray, Cher claims that it is a pointless endeavor.
Among the few people to find much fault with Cher is Josh, her socially conscious ex-stepbrother, who visits during a break from college. Josh and Cher spar continually but without malice; she mocks his scruffy idealism, while he teases her for being selfish, vain, and superficial, and says that her only direction in life is "toward the mall." Cher plays matchmaker for two lonely, nerdy, hard-grading teachers, Mr. Hall and Miss Geist. She achieves her ostensible purpose to make them relax their grading standards so she can renegotiate a bad report card but when she sees their newfound happiness, she realizes she enjoys doing good deeds.
I give it 3.8/5 stars
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THE Ultimate Rom-com list.
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