In 1976, a lower-middle-class teenager struggles to cope living with her neurotic family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.
Contemporary reviews all seem to agree that this has "aged poorly, " but surely the reality is that, filmed in 1998, it was already well beyond sour by the time it was made. That is to say, released a whole sixteen years after the clumsy fumblings of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the only possible reading is that Slums of Beverly Hills is weirdly nostalgic for the sexual politics of the 1980s and wishes to return, if only in the mind, to the creepy sexual dynamics of all those films. And if not, why make this film in 1998?
