Talk to anyone who was coming of age in the millennial period and they'll likely tell you about growing up in two distinct periods. The first half, which ranges from roughly 1996 to the first half of 2001, was a time of optimism, innovation and diversity, albeit alongside a certain dearth of cultural maturity. The second half was a dramatically different time, an era of economic collapse, war, conservative politics and fear. To be a teenager in these two periods was confusing and rocky, and it often feels like the youthful drive that characterized the first half gets overshadowed by the grim, almost pre-apocalyptic feel of the latter half. It's difficult to look at, for instance, the comedies of the late 1990's as anything but hopelessly unprepared for the trying days ahead. The flamboyant party kids of the memorable high school movie Can't Hardly Wait were doomed to grow up to be the disaffected, over-medicated and generally floundering 20-somethings that dominate today's independent film scene.

Can't Hardly Wait is the result of the second creative partnership between Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont. The two have since established themselves as movie industry lifers, hopping into studio projects as screenwriters for mostly forgettable films. They debuted as writers for 1996's A Very Brady Sequel, the less-than-necessary follow-up to the parodic Brady Bunch movie from the year before. Since then, Kaplan and Elfont have been attached to Hollywood's undying love of campy cash cows, among them Josie and the Pussycats and Made of Honor. Their sole unique contribution to cinema is Can't Hardly Wait, which they wrote and directed on a fairly modest $10 million budget. The story concerns a high school graduation party at which various kids play out the final dramas of their adolescent days. It's not the most original premise but it works surprisingly well.

The most telling part of Can't Hardly Wait is that it strays somewhat from the character archetypes that have dominated high school movies for decades. It's not that there aren't jocks, geeks, stoners and other common figures, it's just that they're less pronounced and hard to tell apart. Aside from a few stark characters, most of the kids in the movie occupy that awkward middle territory most actual high schoolers call home. Most of them aren't cool or nerdy to the extreme, but somewhere in the gray zone between. This is fitting, as behind its stock plots of secret crushes, sex comedy and drunkenness, Can't Hardly Wait is a movie about how high school cliques dissolve almost the moment after graduation. It practically promises its target audience that they won't see much of their friends once school is over and they're almost certain to abandon whatever likes, dislikes and quirks they spent so much time cultivating.

But Can't Hardly Wait isn't as melancholic as I've made it sound. At its heart, it's a comfortingly formulaic teen comedy that lives and dies by its cast of soon-to-be stars. The film's ensemble consists of a lot of young actors who would disappear from the industry in subsequent years, but it also sports an impressive number of performers who are still famous today. Among them are Seth Green, Lauren Ambrose, Jason Segal, Clea Duvall and Jason Radner. It's like a lesser, late-90's version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High in that way.

Can't Hardly Wait hasn't aged well and it seems more likely to be forgotten with each passing year. It's not exactly a cinematic masterpiece but it is a nice snapshot of what it was like to be a teen in the back half of the Clinton era. For this alone it's a valuable movie, even if it's doomed to be filed alongside its contemporaries in Spice World and Dude, Where's My Car? If you were too young to relate to the movie when it was in theaters, watch it today and know that, yes, we were actually that silly and oblivious.