Reality Bites

Rating:
Summary: A really good movie
Review: Reality Bites is a look at the lives of a group of 20-somethings after they graduate college and begin their lives. Lelaina is valedictorian of her class, but she is stuck in a dead-end job at a tv station. Meanwhile, she makes a documentary of her and her friend's lives, taking an often very personal look at what each of them is like. Soon she meets Michael, an up and coming businessman who isn't well liked by her friend Troy, a poetic and intelligent man who lacks the motivation to find a real job. What results is a strange love triangle as Lelaina tries to find out who she really is and what she needs.

What is really great about this movie is the strong cast that includes Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, and Ben Stiller. You can relate to Ryder's character of Lelaina, trying to find herself in a crazy world that won't grant you any favors. I highly recommend this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Awakenings
Review: This romantic comedy/ coming of age/ drama/ teen movie presents an intriguing an amusing look at the lives of the twentysomethings, showcasing their conflicts and doubts after graduation.

Director Ben Stiller offers an interesting snapshot of the mid nineties, presenting a curious perspective of that zeitgeist and its atmosphere.
Stiller himself, Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke play three dazed and confused young adults who have to deal with troublesome situations and decisions in a turning point of their lives. The story focuses, with humor and some depth, the difficult and contrived process of growing up, offering characters that have contradictory views and ideas of the world.
The movie wisely covers multiple problems of the Genration X crowd, like the stuggle to find a decent job, the indecisions after graduation, the price of independence or the choices about love. Although this picture has a few years, it still seems fresh and poignant today, focusing situations that occur everywhere.

"Reality Bites" is a fine, witty and clever flick, that despite its somewhat predictable plot proves to be a noteworthy and entertaining effort. A little gem and a good one to watch with a group of friends, since most youngsters can relate to it.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, Reality Bites Sometimes
Review: "Reality Bites" stars Oscar nominees Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, plus Ben Stiller, Jeneane Garofalo, and Steve Zahn. Ben Stiller makes his fine directorial debut in this film. This is a great coming-of-age comedy proving that being independant isn't as great as it looks. The plot of four college graduates moving into a house together is highly entertaining, especially considering all four people have opposite personalities. All of them combined as one adds lots of laughs: a college valedictorian, a sexually active person, a non-motivated rocker, and a mellow person hiding a secret. Comedy and drama combine in the perfect scenes, namely everyone's life struggles, the making of the documentary, and falling in love. Though certain life aspects could have been expressed more thoroughly, the film ideas are brilliant. The acting from all the performers are great, especially Winona Ryder. All offer their own movie theme perspectives, which are mastered greatly. "Reality Bites" is a great memory flashback from a great entertainment era, the mid-90's. This will surely entertain many audiences.

Rating:
Summary: This is the best movie
Review: I can't express how classic this movie is. If you have ever seemed to quetion what the hell you are going to do with your life or questioned relationships with friends, this is the movie for you. It's funny, sad (happy sad), and the soundtrack is nothing but early 90's classics. BUY IT! You can't beat the cast...Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, and Geneane Garofolow (can't spell her name).

Rating:
Summary: This movie ... oh well, you know.
Review: This was probably the first movie I was ever tempted to walk out on. My daughter couldn't wait to see it, and I couldn't turn down a chance to see a Winona movie back then. As a senior member of Gen-X, I was insulted to find that the movie represented me. Blech. Let me assure you, it doesn't represent anyone but whining Hollywood socialites like Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Winona Rider, and Ethan Hawke.

Are we actually supposed to believe that the valedictorian hadn't memorized the conclusion to her speech, or that she lost her notes? Are we supposed to sympathize with a character that does nothing but complain about her father, but then accepts the BMW he gives her and the gas card that she uses to pay off her astrology hotline bills? Now maybe the second inconsistency is a cute attempt at depth, but the first is just lame.

We are told over and over that the Ethan Hawk character is smart, but at no point is he actually *shown* to be smart. He quotes TV commercials. He plays in a band that covers Violent Femmes songs (badly). He majored in philosophy. Big deal - if they didn't keep telling us, you would think that he was just a lazy, arrogant, no-talent slob.

The "gay character" shows up in three 10 second appearances (or maybe it was just 2, and I was hoping for a third so the movie would explain what the others were all about?). I can't believe that anyone would include a gay character so gratuitously - maybe the rest of it ended up on the editing room floor. If not, then I want to know - where were the Native American, black, Puerto Rican, Haitian, transvestite, transexual, AB negative, and other minority characters?

Buy this movie used (you don't want to encourage them to print more). Destroy it and incinerate the pieces. Then buy something worth watching and relax in the knowledge that you have done something positive for humanity. Then go get Singles or Romy and Michele's High School Reunion - they succeed in being just as deep as RB without the pretension, and they are a heck of a lot more entertaining (and the soundtrack to Singles is better).

Rating:
Summary: CAN FINALLY RELATE TO THIS FILM NOW THAT I'M IN MY 20s....
Review: When this film hit theatres in 1994, I was a high school junior who had just scored a 4 on my Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History test, and passed my AP English and Biology tests as well. I was included in the "Who's Who" of American High School students (twice), selected by my high school faculty to attend three prestigious leadership camps (including a journalism conference in DC), and was a member of a popular local R&B group to boot. Oh, and I spoke at my high school graduation too. The point is, I had a lot going for me, so this movie about the utter mediocrity of post-college life (for some) meant nothing to me at the time. Except for the brilliantly simple song "Stay," by Lisa Loeb, that grabbed me the first time I saw it on MTV during what I consider one of the best summers for Alternative music - period.

Now almost ten years later, the happenings in this film finally resonate with my own life experience. I can relate to Ethan Hawke's despairing character who seems to have detached himself from his miserable situation and become wrapped up in his own philisophical musings on the futility of life. And I can also certainly relate to the despair that Winona Ryder's character felt when her dreams weren't exactly coming true for her, despite what she percieved as her gift for filmmaking. The title of the film means so much more to me now than it did before. When I was an overachieving high school student, and super-involved college student at UC Santa Barbara, I thought I had the world in the palm of my hand. I thought life would be a breeze after graduation. Boy was I wrong.

The Ben Stiller character is who I thought I would be, and who I still hope to be. Because pop culture really is my passion. More than anything, Reality Bites seems to be a personal statement from Ben Stiller, a hollywood figure who I have seriously come to admire over the years. His brand of cerebral humor is definitely a breath of fresh air. He is able to point fun at otherwise devastating situations (like shattered dreams) and I have to hand it to him. I really did feel better after viewing this film.

For those of you reading this review, all I will say is this: if you've ever known what it feels like to have a life plan and realize it is not going the way you wanted it to no matter how hard you try, this film will have something to say. I don't know if I buy the "at the end of the day, it's all about love" solution just yet. But I'll admit that I'm a lot closer to that conclusion than I used to be.

Thanks for reading.

D. Knytel.

Rating:
Summary: So much potential!
Review: This movie could have been really great. But, it just ended up being mediocre at best.
It's very stereotypical and predictable in it's portrayal of a bunch of twentysomethings living in an apartment together in the grunge era of the 90's.
Winona Ryder plays Lelaina Pierce, a freshly graduated college valedictorian who finds it impossible to find a job - or to choose between the two guys in her life (Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller).
It's really just a grunged out version of boy (ethan hawke) loves girl (winona ryder) but is too afraid to tell her, so girl goes off with another boy (ben stiller) and boy confesses his love to her, afraid that he will lose her forever - and now she must choose.

It's not a horrible film. But it's nothing great either. If nothing else, it's a good keepsake of the grunge movement of the early nineties.

Rating:
Summary: funny and charming. Stiller's directing debut sizzles
Review: great beginning directing movie for Ben Stiller who has a good part but then his charater gets a little annoying at the end and I liked that Ryder picked Hawke over Stiller. the funniest thing is that Steve Zahn's character turns out to be gay, hilarious. Ethan Hawke sings "Im Nuthing" in the bar scene and he sings it good, not perfect or awesome, but good. Garafolo is a hoot. its funny and charming and a great start for Stiller, who's sister and mom appear in this movie along with Renee Zellweger, David Spade and Kevin Pollack.

Rating:
Summary: A muddled movie with unlikeable characters
Review: I graduated college in 1993. Yet almost a year later I was working as a retail sales clerk. I guess I was one of those underachieving Gen-X "slackers" this movie was trying to reach for its audience. I am now ashamed to admit that I paid to see this movie when it was released. But I swear I only did so because Winona Ryder was and still is (despite her criminal record) very nice to look at and not because I thought this movie spoke to me about my generation or any nonsense like that.

This movie is about four recently graduated college friends who find adjusting to the real world to be tougher than they thought. They end up either working at jobs that they feel are beneath them or they just don't work at all. Meanwhile, their social lives are in turmoil. The story mostly centers around little Winona's character and the two men who compete for her affections. One of these men is played by Ethan Hawke as the penultimate 90's hipster slacker. He's an arrogant philosophy major/musician/poet who chain smokes, has nothing but contempt for people in "corporate America" (ie anyone who works), and has taken aggressive stances against getting a job, shaving, and washing his hair. In other words: Ethan Hawke plays a complete jerk! The other male character is played by Ben Stiller- a hard working TV executive who is very nice. However, in the end the nice guy finishes last as little Winona hooks up with her slimy, leech of a friend. I still remember leaving the theater and saying to myself: "What the heck was that all about?"

I guess this movie is the sort that divides the sexes in their opinions. Every guy I know who has seen this movie finds Ethan Hawke's character to be a contemptible creep. Yet, when I ask women why Winona chooses the jerk in the end they roll their eyes at me and say: "It's Ethan Hawke and he's hot!" My guess of where this movie went awry was that Ben Stiller was incapable of playing his character as a shallow "suit" which is what the script probably called for. Instead, Stiller's inate sweetness transformed his character into the "nice guy" without his realizing it. Thus, people, who can look beyond Hawke's scuzzy good looks, will end up just astonished that Winona chooses the jerk over a good man.

Rating:
Summary: Oh please.
Review: Halfway through RB Ben Stiller makes an extremely prophetic comment. This comment describes exactly the level of insight into life that the viewer can expect from RB. Stiller comments that he (as a TV exec) knows more about what a woman needs than Ethan Hawke, with all his (Hawke's) IQ and his sophomoric ramblings.

Unfortunately that is not the message this flick is trying to convey, since we end up being expected to believe that Ethan, with his criminal habits, has the inside track on life. Great. If this is what we can expect from GenX then God help us, it's time to invest our future somewhere outside the U.S.

In this movie we have 4 losers.

We don't learn much about Steve Zahn, outside that he acts like a druggie and is gay. But the other three are definitely on the fast track to nowhere.

Janeane Garofolo is a promiscuous slut and we are expected to feel sorry for her when (I guess, it's all sort of vague) she contracts HIV. D'uh. Her diary shows 66 partners and she can't seem to remember the name of the dude she just slept with.

Winona Ryder plays another GenX idiot who blows a perfectly decent job because, apparently, the people who hired her expect her to do the duties they hired her to do. This is too much for her. After all she is 23 years old and has a college degree! After she embarasses the guy she's working for on national TV she can't figure out why no one else in the industry will hire her! She actually proves that he was right to not want her as his assisstant. What an idiot she is. But we are supposed to think she is "hip" and her boss (who's paying the salary by the way) is wrong. She then "handles" her unemployment problems by running up huge phone bills on the psychic hotline. What a double idiot. She then "handles" her money problems by running a credit card scam, stealing hundreds of dollars from her father. She basically portrays a criminal. All her life she has been given just about everything on a platter and she rewards the people who helped her with criminal acts.

Then we come to the worst loser of the bunch. Ethan Hawke can't even hold a job at a newsstand. The reason is simple. He is so low on any sort of understanding of the concepts of right and wrong that he steals from his employer. He then sponges off his friends, living rent free and doing nothing to earn it, sneaking his laundry into theirs... you get the picture. But I guess that since he has such a "high IQ" we are supposed to feel his angst. He's just too "smart" to be required to actually do something valuable to earn his keep. He just deserves to live free on everyone else's nickel because he read a few books by Hegel and Kant once. His "philosophy" is unbelieveably simplistic, but as for that there is nothing that anyone is going to learn philosophy-wise in college that hasn't been known since the Egyptians and the Greeks anyhow. But this guy wears his insane nihilistic beliefs like a badge of honor. He is simply lazy and a criiminal and the reason his life is a mess is no mystery at all. He simply has mucked it up on his own. The way he treats Ryder is beneath contempt. And, honestly, anyone who tried to treat me in as contemptible fashion as he did Ben Stiller would learn some manners really quickly as he picked his teeth up off the floor. She naturally dumps Stiller,who offers her everything, for Hawke, who has given and will give nothing but grief.

The only character with any redeeming qualities in this abominable waste of celluloid is Ben Stiller. At least he has a job. He is involved in the entertainment industry. But true to form, when he tries to make Ryder's sophomoric video documentary into something actually entertaining, he is held in contempt for selling out or something like that.

The parents are, naturally, depicted as members of the establishment, unable to understand their GenX children, only interested in money.. yadda yadda yadda... you've heard it all before. But it was done in an entertaining fashion in "The Graduate". RB is a sort of a 90's Bataan Death March. However the "prisoners" are too psychotic to see that the "guards" really are trying to help them out. These GenX dweebs are just too hung up in their own self-importance to ever really see that. So they blithely march down the path of self-destruction and treat every opportunity they come across as some sort of horrible torture.

To be successful in life you have to be able to provide something of value that other people want and are willing to pay for. Does GenX believe that they deserve to live well without doing anything for it? Apparently the real (and unintentional) lesson this movie teaches is that Genx has it so incredibly easy that these people have to contrive really stupid situations in order to create an apparency that their lives have any sort of value. Even the baby boomers had the Vietnam War to force them to some semblance of maturity. This movie depicts GenX as the biggest generation of spoiled brats and losers in history.

I don't believe that GenX deserves to be treated this contemptibly.