*SPOILERS*
"Reality Bites" is one of the more unique viewing experiences I have had recently (just watching it for the first time yesterday, ten years after its release--it was one of those movies I was always just going to get around to seeing, and incredibly this took me a decade). I say unique because, while disappointment is certainly no stranger to the American film fan, it's a rare thing indeed when that disappointment extends to a sense of betrayal, even pain.
The film starts out loaded with promise. Snarky Gen-X college buddies Lelaina (Winona Ryder), Troy (Ethan Hawke), Vickie (Janeane Garafalo) and Sammy (Steve Zahn) have just graduated, hate their jobs, and are looking for direction in the directionless mid-'90s. Lelaina has started a documentary about the four of them in hopes of finding answers that way. Then she causes a stranger she initially mistakes for a yuppy (Michael, played by director Ben Stiller) to have a car accident, which leads to a sweet and very authentic romance. The whole film feels supremely natural from the get-go. The performances and characters are solid (aside from token gay buddy Sammy, who is a complete and utter tack-on) and the attitudes capture the era as well as the clothes and music.
Then, much to my chagrin, we are betrayed by Stiller and screenwriter Helen Childress on several fronts.
First, the movie almost abruptly stops being about youth and self-discovery and turns into a tired love-triangle story with the loathesome Troy making up the other leg of the tripod with Lelaina and Michael. Sure, I get it, the two of them represent the choices in life and direction that Lelaina must face. But I don't want these characters reduced to a cheap metaphor, especially when the metaphor crowds out a theme that could have been really meaningful to anyone who was young in the '90s. We never had our "Five Easy Pieces," sadly.
Secondly, and most grievously, Lelaina and the film choose terribly wrong. They choose Troy. And in doing so, "Reality Bites" makes the same sad mistakes that its generation did. It mistakes a goatee and a lock of hair over the eye for sincerity. It prizes immaturity, ego, pretension, self-absorption, inertia and tantrums over the honesty and humility of Michael. It's almost laughable when the massively phony Troy tells Lelaina, "I'm the only real thing you have." There's nothing real about Troy. There was nothing real about the legions of self-obsessed a**holes he represented.
Because Troy is so unlikable, the movie makes the unforgivably cheap move of killing off his unseen father about ten minutes from the end. This is supposed lend this vile human being some kind of worth in our eyes, I guess, but I didn't buy it for an instant. The orphan routine comes off as just another drama-queen ploy (successful, of course) to worm his way into Lelaina's pants. What really scares and even sickens me is that female viewers probably ACTUALLY SWOONED when Hawke delivered those maudlin final lines to Ryder--falling for the seduction of the worst aspects of that era...if this were an '80s movie, choosing Troy would be the equivalent of choosing the rich, yuppy jock.
Then, the worst betrayal of all, the movie completely abandons Michael, easily the best character (certainly the best person) in the film. He's not worth an ending, you see, because he has a clean-looking haircut and doesn't play acoustic guitar. Someone please give me a stiff drink so I can forget about this ending.
I'm angry enough to give this film a 3, but I figure anything that evokes so much feeling in me, even for the wrong reasons, has to be worth at least a 5. Great performances (Ryder, Garafalo and Stiller), superb and natural direction, some nice dialogue, and an overall sense of authenticity push it to a 6. But I'm hard-pressed to go beyond that for a movie that so completely and utterly fails to "get it," and in the process loses the opportunity to be a landmark film for my generation.
If you want something that actually deals with mid-'90s ennui in an unflinching manner and offers real insight, rent 1994's other slacker opus, "Clerks."
"Reality Bites" is one of the more unique viewing experiences I have had recently (just watching it for the first time yesterday, ten years after its release--it was one of those movies I was always just going to get around to seeing, and incredibly this took me a decade). I say unique because, while disappointment is certainly no stranger to the American film fan, it's a rare thing indeed when that disappointment extends to a sense of betrayal, even pain.
The film starts out loaded with promise. Snarky Gen-X college buddies Lelaina (Winona Ryder), Troy (Ethan Hawke), Vickie (Janeane Garafalo) and Sammy (Steve Zahn) have just graduated, hate their jobs, and are looking for direction in the directionless mid-'90s. Lelaina has started a documentary about the four of them in hopes of finding answers that way. Then she causes a stranger she initially mistakes for a yuppy (Michael, played by director Ben Stiller) to have a car accident, which leads to a sweet and very authentic romance. The whole film feels supremely natural from the get-go. The performances and characters are solid (aside from token gay buddy Sammy, who is a complete and utter tack-on) and the attitudes capture the era as well as the clothes and music.
Then, much to my chagrin, we are betrayed by Stiller and screenwriter Helen Childress on several fronts.
First, the movie almost abruptly stops being about youth and self-discovery and turns into a tired love-triangle story with the loathesome Troy making up the other leg of the tripod with Lelaina and Michael. Sure, I get it, the two of them represent the choices in life and direction that Lelaina must face. But I don't want these characters reduced to a cheap metaphor, especially when the metaphor crowds out a theme that could have been really meaningful to anyone who was young in the '90s. We never had our "Five Easy Pieces," sadly.
Secondly, and most grievously, Lelaina and the film choose terribly wrong. They choose Troy. And in doing so, "Reality Bites" makes the same sad mistakes that its generation did. It mistakes a goatee and a lock of hair over the eye for sincerity. It prizes immaturity, ego, pretension, self-absorption, inertia and tantrums over the honesty and humility of Michael. It's almost laughable when the massively phony Troy tells Lelaina, "I'm the only real thing you have." There's nothing real about Troy. There was nothing real about the legions of self-obsessed a**holes he represented.
Because Troy is so unlikable, the movie makes the unforgivably cheap move of killing off his unseen father about ten minutes from the end. This is supposed lend this vile human being some kind of worth in our eyes, I guess, but I didn't buy it for an instant. The orphan routine comes off as just another drama-queen ploy (successful, of course) to worm his way into Lelaina's pants. What really scares and even sickens me is that female viewers probably ACTUALLY SWOONED when Hawke delivered those maudlin final lines to Ryder--falling for the seduction of the worst aspects of that era...if this were an '80s movie, choosing Troy would be the equivalent of choosing the rich, yuppy jock.
Then, the worst betrayal of all, the movie completely abandons Michael, easily the best character (certainly the best person) in the film. He's not worth an ending, you see, because he has a clean-looking haircut and doesn't play acoustic guitar. Someone please give me a stiff drink so I can forget about this ending.
I'm angry enough to give this film a 3, but I figure anything that evokes so much feeling in me, even for the wrong reasons, has to be worth at least a 5. Great performances (Ryder, Garafalo and Stiller), superb and natural direction, some nice dialogue, and an overall sense of authenticity push it to a 6. But I'm hard-pressed to go beyond that for a movie that so completely and utterly fails to "get it," and in the process loses the opportunity to be a landmark film for my generation.
If you want something that actually deals with mid-'90s ennui in an unflinching manner and offers real insight, rent 1994's other slacker opus, "Clerks."