Reality Bites

I watched this film because of the cast; Winonna Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Steve Zahn and Ben Stiller. It's supposed to be a look at the struggles of Gen X as they were coming out of college and into the job market. Hey, even though I'm a little young to be classified as Gen X, I liked their music, movies and am also a recent college grad so surely I'd like this.

I was wrong. I hated it - it was very much a perfect example of a lackluster film. There was no cohesion anywhere - scenes felt slammed together, performances were all over the place, and the plot was razor thin. Thirty minutes into the film, I guessed that this thing was very poorly produced and many, many scenes wound up on the cutting room floor.

So, these four friends (Winonna Ryder, Steve Zahn, Ethan Hawke and Janeane Garofalo) are graduating except Hawke. He dropped out (they asked if he'd finish his BFA yet he always talks about philosophy) and has run through a string of dead-end jobs - always getting fired for something stupid like stealing a Snickers from the gas station he's working at. Winonna is a PA at a morning TV show, Janeane works at the Gap and it's never really shown what Steve Zahn does except be gay (a point that doesn't come across until he comes out to his mom - I guess the fact that he was always wearing a bright colored polo should've been a clue?).

Winonna meets Ben Stiller, who is an executive for an MTV clone and she starts to date him, much to the dismay of Hawke who apparently is in love with her but they are apparently best friends and apparently he can't deal with commitment. I say apparently to those things because the characters say that's what happening but the audience never really sees it.

As things progress, Ben get's MTV to pick up this documentary Winonna is working on but they end up chopping it up and making it look like something that would actually be on TV and she thinks her 'art' is ruined and she ends up running into the arms of Hawke so they are now both broke, jobless and prospect-less.

That's the happy ending apparently.

I struggled to go to sleep last night after watching this thing - I can't tell if it's one of the worst films I've seen or if it is genius. Considering the cast and style of the film, it seems pretty obvious that this was a studio trying to cash in on the Gen X'ers and they're love of melancholy and damning the man and all of that. So, it's a MAJOR STUDIO panning to people that hate major anything. The film was so clearly aimed at the superficial aspects of Gen X - chain smoking cigarettes, disillusion of the idea of marriage, tons of sexual partners and again, general melancholy - but it missed any real content and instead tried to form a typical narrative around inactive characters. Thus, nothing was believable and the main characters were very unlikable.

The genius of the film is if you look at it in another light - as an anti-Gen X propaganda piece. The most likable character is Ben Stiller, the 'sell-out.' He's also the most successful and seems to be the most happy. The last thing we really know is that he's still an executive and the rest have no job or, in the case of Garofalo, are managing The Gap. Also, there seems to be tons of product placement for companies that were definitely trying to attract the Gen X - The Gap, Pizza Hut, Diet Coke, Snickers, Camel Cigarettes, etc. So, if this film was a jab at the Gen X to show how absolutely pathetic they whole 'movement' was then it's brilliant  Still an unwatchable film but now it's unwatcahable for a reason. That's some straight up concept art.

Anyway, here's the trailer: