Clueless about Emma

Do you know what it says on the back of the DVD case for the movie Emma? It says, "Based on the same story as Clueless." And yes, that is true. But they never once mention that story happens to be classic romance literature written by the inimitable Jane Austen.

Is it even important Emma the movie hatched from the same storyline as Clueless? Isn't it more important to Clueless that it hatched from somewhere more grounded than its own intentionally groundless title?

I saw Clueless at Graumen's Chinese Theater in summer of 1995. My family was visiting L.A. on the way to a soccer tournament in San Diego. My father and I are classic movie buffs, and Graumen's was a dream. And for a teenage girl (I was 15), Clueless was also a dream. So was L.A. in its way. My mother and grandmother took my sister and I to get our hair done on Rodeo Drive. We shopped and cavorted as only the young an impressionable can do out of their element. Then we moved on to the sunny San Diego.
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But now I see that Emma reigns supreme in its original book form. The movies serve different audiences and are, in my opinion, incomparable. But to completely ignore Jane Austen on the back of the movie based on her book? Horrible. Ignorant.

And to tie Emma the move to Clueless as if the former burst from the empty mind of the latter. Inconceivable. Literally.