The Bettys & Baldwins Of Tomorrow

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Have you guys heard about Beyond Clueless? It's a documentary - well as my date for the screening held in Brooklyn last week Glenn Dunks said, calling a documentary's not exactly right... it's more of a video-essay - about the tickles and tropes of Teen Movies post-Amy Heckerling's 1995 classic. Basically filmmaker Charlie Lyne edited together clips from about 200 films, ranging from Bring It On to Final Destination to The Craft to 10 Things I Hate About You, and on and on and on and on, and shows the way the genre evolved, devolved, and often spun its wheels over the exact same material time and time and time again. (The bit that got me was the montage of Swimming Pool Scenes -- they really do all have some kind of a Swimming Pool Scene!)

It's sort of an impossible film to review - if you're of the right age, you'll dig it. It maybe runs a little long? Anyway I'm not actually going to attempt to review it anyway (anyway!) - no, what I am here for is a thought that struck me while watching the movie as the parade of people I haven't thought of in years - Rachael Leigh Cook! Claire Forlani! Devon Sawa! (Okay not specifically Devon Sawa because I think of Final Destination all the time, but you get my point) - paraded by. 

Some of the movies featured are less than a decade removed and yet I'd completely forgotten they and their stars were ever even a thing. (Um again, hi Claire Forlani.) But there's a deep well of actors represented by these projects (you can see a lot of titles here) and being reintroduced to them all I could think about was -- some of these people are due for a comeback. More than a comeback, even -- somebody from the past is always getting snatched up and used in a surprising way and we all go, "Oh my god, look at them! Who knew?" Where was Neil Patrick Harris between Doogie and Harold & Kumar? Who's got a Pulp Fiction resurrection in them? Will Alicia Silverstone win an Oscar one day?

This is a bit of a cheat because she's already well on her road to Comeback status but my pick is Natasha Lyonne. She had a rough rough road for awhile there but she was great then and she's great now - in fact she's clearly channeling some of that rough road into her performance on Orange is the New Black and honestly I could see her being thought of strictly as a serious and accomplished actress one day who yes once upon a time co-starred in several American Pie movies. Speaking of...

... she's not the only American Pie gal on the comeback trail!

In all seriousness though, who do you think could 

forge their way back from Teen Movie Oblivion 

and be a newly crowned Star of Tomorrow?