Ben Stiller directs Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Janeane Garofalo in this twenty something teen movie / romantic comedy / Generation X time capsule.

Forget Top Gun and Pulp Fiction. This has the Greatest Movie Soundtrack Of All Time! OK… maybe it’s neck and neck with Dazed And Confused’s OST. The movie itself is a little mercenary. Rather cack handedly trying to define an era as it was happening. While the plot is basically an update on Alcott / Austen / Brontë. Will our self aware heroine chose love or security… both choices come with a loss of independence, integrity and artistry. Both suitors are absolute states. And everyone else is insufferable too. Still, it is trying to be adult, cuter and edgier than Friends in passing. Winona feels like she is playing a human being who does shopping and laundry which was a rarity in the Nineties. There are some good laughs. The script has wit that rounds off the cliched tartness and those fool’s errand attempts to be seminal. And because it was marketed as THE Generation X movie, nostalgia now means it fulfils that destiny. We all know Before Sunrise is the actual Gen X movie that got things right. I kinda love Reality Bites in spite of itself.

8

Perfect Double Bill: Empire Records (1995)

I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin