Courtney Wells (Jill Schoelen) is a rich girl (hence, the title). Realizing that she is 21 years old and has yet to really experience life, Courtney declares her independence. She breaks up with her cheating fiancée and tells her industrialist father (Paul Gleason, of course) that she no longer wants to go into the family business. When her father responds by cutting her off, the rich girl becomes a poor girl. Though she struggles at first, Courtney eventually trades her Ferrari for a reasonable car, finds a cheap apartment, and gets a job working as a waitress at a trendy Los Angeles nightclub, which is owned by Rocco (Ron Karabastos, of course). She falls in love with aspiring musician Rick (Don Michael Paul) but he is already involved with his cokehead lead singer (Cherie Currie) and Courtney’s father will do anything to keep her and Rick apart.
In the early 1990s, Rich Girl was a late night HBO mainstay. There is nothing surprising about the movie and Rick’s band has a sound that was already dated by 1991. (While the rest of America is learning to love grunge, Rick and his band are still playing Bon Jovi cover tunes in the garage.) However, Rich Girl does star the always gorgeous Jill Schoelen, which makes it a hundred times better than every other low-budget film that showed up on HBO in the early 90s. Whatever happened to her?
Look familiar?
Here’s why.
Scott Wolf plays Clyde, a nerdy high school student who has a go-nowhere job at a burger place. Maureen Flannigan, best known for starring in Out Of This World, is Bonnie, who likes to steal stuff and have fun. Unfortunately, Bonnie’s father (played by Tom Bower) is not an avuncular alien who sounds like Burt Reynolds. Instead, he’s the extremely strict and controlling police commissioner of their hometown. Clyde like Bonnie but Bonnie wants nothing to do with him. It’s not until Clyde spies Bonnie shoplifting in a record store that he realizes that larceny is the key to her heat. When Clyde steals a van and Bonnie steals her father’s guns, the two of them head for Mexico, robbing banks, shooting guns, making love (which, judging from the comments I have found online, is the main reason the film found an audience once it started showing up on HBO) and becoming media celebrities along the way.
Through the Shattered Lens 