Reality Bites

Reality Bites is a movie I can currently relate with, as I have been recently suffering through post-college trauma. The movie has such a relatable premise, but I feel it could have been just a little better. But watching the movie provided me with the feeling that I am not alone in this ordeal. The movie was written pretty well and this is Ben Stiller's directorial debut, so a movie like this is not a bad way to begin a directing career.

Stiller's film is about a TV production assistant named Lelaina who is creating a documentary about post-grad life with her three friends: Troy who is a philosophical unemployed slacker, Vicki who is the manager of Gap, and Sammy who is trying to find his sexuality. When she meets Michael, an executive at an MTV-like studio, there is a chance her documentary can now go public.

The film is reasonably acted. Winona Ryder does a pretty good job as Lelaina, even if she seems a little whiny. I liked Ethan Hawke's character as his philosophy reminded of his character in the Before Sunrise series. Ben Stiller had a limited role, but he did a solid job. I also like Steve Zahn as the man trying to find out who he is.

Overall, Reality Bites is a decent movie because mainly it has a theme that people my age can relate to. The path to show this theme may not work as effective, but the movie was still mostly entertaining. I will say that the documentary shots got a little annoying at times, but the narrative itself is quite good.

My Grade: B

Any film striving to chart the up-to-the-minute details of twenty-something life in 1994 was bound to feel a tad outdated the second that 1995 had found its cultural niche. And true, 'Reality Bites' was clearly trying so hard to be hip and with the times that there are points when its characters can seem very distant now (there can't be too many people today who'd consider dancing around a gas station like an unrestrained idiot to be a fitting definition of coolness – nowadays viewers will probably be more inclined to identify with the clerk looking on with bemusement in that scene). Nonetheless, the uncertainties that come with entering adulthood and establishing a steady independent life of your own in the real world will always be relevant issues to young people no matter what the era, so any flick that deals with them has a fair chance of striking a chord with such an audience (being a young twenty-something myself, they're certainly hot on my own mind). Sadly, they never amount to much more here than the backdrop for a familiar love triangle yarn, albeit the familiar love triangle yarn as you've never seen it before. Our lead girl still gets torn between two guys, each from a different rung on the social ladder, only this time round it's actually the down-to-earth businessman making a healthy living for himself (Michael) who's an amiable mass of benevolence, and the laid-back young musician struggling to make ends meet (Troy) who acts like an offhand, self-righteous bully for much of his screen time. That the film still expects our sympathies to lie in the usual places regardless and root for Troy simply because he's the underdog is just the slightest bit galling (let's ignore the fact that Leliana, the lucky heroine who has the honour of choosing between them, is something of a whiny, irresponsible brat herself). Perhaps the only thing more fatal than choosing to go with such a wearisome and predictable formula is using characters that don't even comfortably fit it.

Fortunately, 'Reality Bites' does have a number of small redeeming qualities which come along at just the right moments and may make us intermittently forget that this is all going to be part of something very hollow and routine overall. It's stylish, well-crafted and reasonably entertaining, if you can forgive the occasional patch of cringe-inducing dialogue ("I'm a non-practicing Jew" "Hey, I'm a non-practicing virgin" – dear lord), and Ben Stiller adds life and flair from whichever side of the camera he's on. His debut direction feels surprisingly accomplished, panning the various scenes from a selection of imaginative angles and connecting them together very smoothly, while his character is easily the most likable and understandable of the bunch (too bad he wasn't meant to be). John Mahoney (better known for his role as Martin Crane in the popular sitcom 'Frasier') has a memorable cameo as a disgruntled TV show host, the soundtrack is filled with lots of little audio treats, and the people in the prop department have certainly provided us with plenty of interesting things to look at – it's actually quite fun to watch if you keep your eye out for all the novelty memorabilia that these characters have hoarded; in addition to Michael's beloved Dr Zaius figurine, a Garfield-shaped telephone and a metal 'Charlie's Angels' lunch-box, among others, have made it to the set.

But what really hurts 'Reality Bites' in the end, other than the hackneyed storyline, is just how much depth and substance the protagonists are sorely lacking. Considering that it revolves around a recently-graduated girl determined to demonstrate that she and her friends are more than just shallow Generation X-ers, devoid of any desires that extend beyond having sex and eating pizza, it doesn't exactly do a great deal to convince us otherwise. Most of their time is seemingly devoted to nothing more ambitious than messing around and having spats with each other, while the more serious material, including a subplot which sees Leliana's best friend Vickie awaiting the results of a test for HIV, is downplayed so considerably that you never get the impression that any of them are terribly concerned. The back-stories we hear about rough childhoods of divorced or neglectful parents are equally perfunctory, and the sad fact that Troy's dad is currently dying from prostate cancer is treated very incidentally by the film as a whole - what little is made of it feels more like an emotional blackmail designed to make us feel sympathy for the pretentious Troy than an actual aspect of his character.

It gives us something good every now and then, but overall 'Reality Bites' just isn't strong or satisfying enough to qualify as a coming of age classic (don't even think about comparing it to 'the Graduate', or even 'Risky Business'). While it may go on being fondly-remembered by those who experienced it at the time, on the whole this one feels like it's been rather grounded in 1994, and left with only real claim to fame – and that's that it famously beat 'Pulp Fiction' to the rights to have 'My Sharona' on its soundtrack. With hindsight, it was probably 'Pulp Fiction' who had the last laugh.

Grade: B-

I really do have difficulty with the short shrift this film seems to get. Admittedly, Ethan Hawke's appaling "I'm nuthin'" doesn't really do the film any favours but that asides, Reality Bites always has me in tears. The basic storyline, centering on a love that both people know exist but due to circumstance and fear has not manifested is so universal, and so well done. The 'my life is falling apart' endless phone calls to the psychic 0900 number part is so tragi-comedic, and the entire movie is full of continuous great scenes. Admittedly, being a single 25 year old white male who originally saw the film a few years back, I was probably caught at the optimal time for it to have an emotional impact, but I find myself going back to it again and again. Winona has never been better, and Janeane Garofalo is stunning as the low self-esteem serial one night stander with the AIDS paranoia and over-full shag book. Also, great cameos from the Soul Asylum geezer and Evan Dando's stunning turn during the end credits add to the film. Overall a stunning film, admittedly which will probably only be appreciated by a relatively narrow demographic.

I really enjoyed this movie. Looking back in hindsight, I can see the selfishness of the characters, and I have read the complaints about this, but isn't that kind of the whole point of the movie? It's about people talking about not "selling out" while at the same time they ARE "selling out" in many different ways. They (the characters in the movie) are all consumers who satirize the very idea of "consumerism" but refuse to "stoop down to the level" of getting menial jobs to try and pay the bills. The movie defines for me how education isn't everything and from my own experience I have learned that sometimes the "great dream" (of being a writer, artist, musician, etc.) just doesn't pay the bills and in order to make decent money one may have to go into a field that is not originally their first choice as a means of employment. I remember being young and wistful, with dreams of being an artist, only to have to "settle" for an office job to make ends meet.

The movie does express what life was like for me at the time. I was a naive student with dreams of producing great artistic work, but who learned that what is taught in college as "reality" is not really reality at all. College students are fed with lofty artistic statements and philosophies and are taught to analyze endless aspects of society, ideals, etc., and are taught that "knowledge and education are power" but are not taught that credibility and respect are things which must be earned and that very few people actually start out at the top of the career ladder.

Overall, this continues to be one of my favorite films and I appreciate the myriad of messages that it sends, though they may, at times, be contradictory.

I rented this movie knowing it wasn't really a comedy but a drama about the life of people in their early twenties in the 90's. What pushed me to rent it was the fact that many people qualified this film as horrible, but many other people loved this film and were talking about it like it was the most realistic thing ever.

Let's face it. I'm not going to pretend to know what it's like to be a teenager/young adult in the 90's since I was 9 years old when this movie came out. However, I think I have a good enough judgement to tell if this movie was realistic or not based on my personal experiences.

This movie isn't specially about the 90's, it's about "becoming an adult" and all it implies. It's about a cast of characters who hesitate between forever living what they were told is a pointless life [always having fun and bumming around] and becoming like the adults that they have criticized so much in their childhood. This, by itself, is very realistic, because it's a problem that many young people face even today. The main character Lalaina represents this fact completely. She's shooting a video of her friends as they struggle to find themselves in this world that was built by baby-boomers that they can't relate to. Also, she's a very clean-cut and hard working person, yet she hangs out with her friends who are more of the "rebellious" type.

This movie tries to represent the "alternative" crowd. Each character in this movie has an "alternative" as well as a "conformist" side, which is very strange. By example, you have a female character who wears vintage clothes and lives in a typical artsy room but works at the gap. This is another side of what was mentioning earlier. As young adults, they're straying away from the whole "alternative-ness" of their teenage years. This is something I've seen among people I know as well, and that I personally dislike. I guess it's something very typical of our era as well as the 90's.

What I found unrealistic in this movie was that the characters seem a bit cliché sometimes. Sure, I've seen people like that. But the personalities in the movie are too simplified. By example, there's the guy who always is slacking around doing nothing because he feels that having a full-time job until you retire is like wasting your life. Okay, but what else? What type of person is this guy, really? Also.. Each of the characters seem to act the way they do because they come from broken homes, which isn't very realistic in my opinion... The video that the main character has made is supposed to make their viewers know her friends and herself, but we don't really get to know them by watching the entire movie.

Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable movie. I liked the atmosphere of it. It also wasn't always predictable. I gave this movie a 7 because I liked it even though I disliked some of it's aspects.