Hierarchical high-schoolers lampooned in a manner hardly more mature than that of the targets. This is certainly more than just another dead-teenager movie, although the plotline of serial murders (disguised as serial suicides) is, equally certainly, satire at its most sledgehammery. Occasional comparison comes to mind with the sadly unremembered Lord Love a Duck (1966), but lines like "I'm cut out to send my SAT scores to San Quentin instead of Stanford" and "If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game-show host" are enough to make George Axelrod sound like Aristophanes. Winona Ryder, as the pivotal teenager poised between Popularity and Commonality, brings some class to the enterprise; but her opposite number, Christian Slater, as the Rebel Without A Mother, brings only a bad imitation of Jack Nicholson. Written by Daniel Waters; directed by Michael Lehmann. (1989) — Duncan Shepherd