Not surprisingly, this portrait of subUrbia (let's keep the pretentious spelling intact) comes from Richard Linklater, Mr. Slacker himself. It's from a play by Eric Bogosian, and since neither of these artistes is known for his action-packed stories, you know you're in for a talkfest. The plot, such as it is, is that there are these four or five losers who work the type of jobs that require hairnets and spend their free time hanging out at the convenience store. One of their own, Pony, became an "MTV rock star" and now returns to visit his old haunts, in a limo, no less. Relationships form and break up, much beer and whiskey is drunk, we listen to meaningless babble about meaningless lives.
Which is actually pretty funny for the first hour or so. It's helped enormously by Steve "That Thing You Do" Zahn's manic performance as Buff, a guy who seriously needs to think about switching to decaf. Also excellent is Amie Carey as Sooze, a really bad performance artist who at least has the ambition to leave town. Ironically, the movie slows down just when the characters finally go somewhere other than the corner -- on a limo ride with Pony (a Beck-ish figure who spouts pretentious artsy talk).
From then on, it drags in that peculiarly Linklater way (did anyone stay awake all the way through Slacker?), then suddenly takes an inexplicable and ill-advised veer toward heavy melodrama. In the last half hour, Linklater & Bogosian suddenly want their movie to be ABOUT something; they've got a MESSAGE. Which is that these kids are wasting their lives -- well, DUH. You don't need to spell it out -- but Bogosian does, via the Pakistani convenience store owner who's suffered the kids' thoughtless racism and obnoxious behavior throughout the movie. The whole movie up to that point is watching these kids try to find meaning in lives which are devoid of it; suddenly the movie does the same thing. And it's just not funny any more.
A footnote: I don't know if the theater is doing this
intentionally,
but the previews before the last two movies I've seen were oddly
linked.
Before Sling Blade, they showed
previews
for Hard Eight and
The Eighth Day. Before subUrbia,
the previews were for Crash (about people who get off sexually
from
car crashes) and
Lost Highway (which featured car crashes).
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