Countless words of exegesis on the teen movie have been published, but Lyne has winningly executed a fresh method that abandons the attempt to describe audiovisual media with only words, often instead letting clips speak for themselves.

Beyond Clueless charts a keenly observed plethora of visual tropes, yet commits overkill with its recurrent embedding of a teen-movie staple – the montage – into the doc’s own form.

An 89-minute film cannot be expected to exhaustively analyse the teen movie, but Beyond Clueless is impressively expansive, charting the depiction of adolescence across distinct genres which include horror and the modern Shakespeare adaptation.

Its insights aren’t all groundbreaking, but by making comparisons between well-loved teen fare (Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate About You) alongside lesser known films, Beyond Clueless frequently provokes nostalgic joy whilst also inspiring further cinematic discovery.

RATING: 3/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Fairuza Balk (narrator)

DIRECTOR: Charlie Lyne

WRITER: Charlie Lyne

SYNOPSIS: A dizzying and immersive journey into the mind and (especially) body of the post-1990 teen movie, as seen through footage from over 200 coming-of-age classics.