‘Fast Times’ remains fast fun

As the bottom half of a double feature from journalist turned filmmaker Cameron Crowe, Turner Classic Movies offers the very funny and sometimes surprisingly sweet “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” Saturday, July 15. Crowe adapted the 1982 film (which Amy Heckerling directed) from his same-named book for which he went incognito at a California high school, and though certain characters here may be more like caricatures – take, for instance, surfing-minded stoner Jeff Spicoli (played by Sean Penn) – the result is enormously entertaining.

Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Forest Whitaker are among others playing students, with the great character actor Ray Walston the most notable adult on hand as … Mr. Hand, a no-nonsense history teacher whose classroom showdowns with the perpetually bemused Spicoli are among the very best scenes in the movie. The soundtrack is loaded with such hitmakers as Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Jimmy Buffett and Joe Walsh. (The first part of TCM’s Crowe double feature, incidentally, is the superb “Almost Famous.”)