Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #16 - Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Who here remembers the good times of the early 1980s? No really, because I wouldn't be born for about another decade. Somebody, fill me in.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High is just that all-round 'feel-good' movie. It takes place over the course of one school year at, well, Ridgemont High. The movie follows several characters as their lives are intertwined and they develop from who they are into who they're going to be for the rest of their lives. Several key standouts, like Judge Reinhold as Brad Hamilton is the star fry chef at All-American Burger and dates his high school sweetheart before getting fired and dumped close to the same time. He struggles emotionally as he copes with his new mundane job and works toward trying to finish school on a positive vibe, eventually halting a robbery. The main star is his sister Stacy, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. She struggles with that female coming-of-age want and need for sexual attention, eventually to the point of having seven-second-sex with her potential lover Mark Ratner's good friend Mike Damone and getting knocked up...you know...as all girls...do? Ehhhhhhh, not the best time for a joke. Poor as it was. I won't spoil how that gets resolved, but ain't pretty.

The stand-out character and the one everyone remembers is Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli, the stoner-surfer dude who becomes the constant annoyance and chagrin of his US History teacher, Mr. Hand, played by Ray Walston. Mr. Hand keeps track of all of Spicoli's wasted time in class and then on the last school dance of the year, he barges into Spicoli's house and just sits there, getting his wasted time back by studying US History with him in one of the funniest scenes of the movie. This movie isn't just one of Penn's debut acting performances, but remains that way for other now-big-time Hollywood names: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judge Reinhold (as mentioned) but also Forest Whitaker, Eric Stoltz and even Nicolas Cage as a background character, one of Brad's friends. One of those weird movies where every face is recognizable to us, but to people at the time, nobody would know the careers a lot of these guys would come to have.

The movie is very emotional, being one of those teen dramedies. It's part drama and its part comedy, but the funny bits are insanely funny and the emotional bits are insanely tear-jerking and mind-numbing. You really start to put yourself in these characters' shoes and wonder what it would be like if you ran through these messed up scenarios, or if you're older than that you'll flashback in your mind to the time when high school was simpler than the life you've got now and you'll remember with irony how easy all those "difficult" times were compared to how rough you have it now. Wait... I'm the only one that does that? Shit.