Slums of Beverly Hills is a 1998 American comedy film that follows fourteen-year-old Vivian, her brothers, and perpetually broke father as they apartment hop through the affluent neighborhood in order for the kids to keep attending the prestigious high schools.
Vivian's uncle Mickey is often helping out by sending them some money for rent. But Uncle Mickey has got his own problems in the form of his adult daughter Rita, who runs away from drug rehab and seeks shelter over at her cousin Vivian's. Murray, Vivian's dad, offers to help Rita get the help she needs and help her get her degree in nursing if Mickey will pay the rent of a more plush apartment. Mickey agrees to do this, on the condition that Rita doesn't fall back into drugs and doesn't fail her classes, and expects progress reports.
What then follows is Vivian basically babysitting the twenty-nine-year-old cousin and making sure she stays clean. But Vivian is much more interested in hanging out with the neighbor boy, Eliot and desperately wants her family to not be so embarrassing.
Tropes:
- Artistic License – Cars: Vivian's car-salesman dad is broke because Oldsmobile's gas-guzzlers aren't selling. In 1976 the Oldsmobile Cutlass was the best-selling car in America.
- Artistic License – Law: After Eliot and Vivian have sex and he discovers it's her first time, he says in exasperation that he's a "criminal on two counts—de-virginizing a minor." Whether a minor was a virgin carries no relevance in laws against statutory rape.
- Book Ends: "I'm in the mood for steak for breakfast".
- D-Cup Distress: The angst is not caused by Vivian's body, but rather, her father ordering her to put on a bra with her halter top. Since she does not seem to have a strapless bra, she is forced to go around with the straps hanging out.
- Hitchhiker's Leg: Marissa Tomei's character gets a ride from a trucker by standing in the middle of the road and opening her bathrobe. The headlights shining through the robe suggested nothing underneath. In the uncensored version, you see her boldly open her robe and flash her boobs at the driver.
- Hollywood California: The film features a poor family who lives in cheap apartments in the rich Beverly Hills area so the children can attend the well-funded local schools.
- It Came from Beverly Hills: Having "Beverly Hills" in the title certainly provides some leverage at the box office.
- Pig Latin: Vivian and Rita communicate in Iddiga, with subtitles.
- Scholarship Student: Subverted. While the schools in the 90210 area code seem to be public, the protagonist's father keeps moving around within the district so his kids can attend what he considers to be "better" schools than the ones in poorer areas.
- The '70s: The film is set in 1976 and the reason the family is broke is because the father (a car salesman) can't sell more due to the Energy Crisis.
- She Is All Grown Up: Puberty hits Vivian fast and hard, that she almost grows enormous breasts overnight.
- Their First Time: Vivian loses her virginity to Eliot in his car while picking up her cousin from nursing school.
