Reality Bites (PG-13)
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When this movie came out in 1994, I was 18 years old, which was a few years younger than the characters in the movie. I'm not sure when I first saw the movie, but it must have been anywhere from the late 90s to the early 2000s, either on TV or VHS. By that time, I guess I would have been at least the same age, maybe older, than the characters were. I'm writing this review after watching the movie for the second time ever, on DVD, in 2019, when I'm 43. By this time, I didn't remember anything about the movie, but I was fairly sure I'd found it somewhat disappointing, the first time I saw it. And re-watching it now, nothing about it was really familiar to me, but I suppose I enjoyed it a bit more than I did the first time. But I still didn't like it as much as I wish I could. I really like the cast. And I love the music (I owned the soundtrack long before I ever saw the movie, and it's definitely better than the movie itself). Other than that, the best thing I can say about it is that it's interesting as a sort of time capsule of Gen X as young adults in the early 90s. Even if their experiences were absolutely nothing like any experience I've ever had, so I can't really identify with any of them. And I don't think I have ever really wanted to identify with or live lives like these people. But that doesn't stop some part of me from thinking of them as somehow "cooler" than I've ever been. Partly that's because I come from a small, rural town where I had no chance for any kind of life that would have interested me, and I always wished I could live in an actual city. And I suppose part of it is because regardless of where I have lived at any point in my life, my own psychological issues (Asperger's Syndrome, depression, social anxiety, etc.) have always made it really hard for me to do anything "cool" even if I had the opportunity to do so. But I'm not sure any of the characters are actually cool.

Anyway, it begins with a college graduation, and a commencement address given by Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder). And I kind of got the feeling that the world hasn't actually changed that much, in the 25 years since the movie came out. I mean, young adults back then were worried about figuring out how to deal with all the societal problems they'd inherited from previous generations, and that's exactly what subsequent generations are doing now. But whatevs. Lelaina's fellow graduates include her friends Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) and Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn), as well as Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke), who I think just barely failed to graduate (but I could have misunderstood). Lelaina is making a documentary about her friends and herself, called "Reality Bites." (That's "bites" as in "sound bites," though it's common to mistake the title for using "bites" as in "sucks." Which works just as well, honestly.) But before she can make money as a filmmaker, she has to get a job, and ends up working on a local TV show hosted by some jerk played by John Mahoney. Troy, meanwhile, can't hold a steady job, but he is the lead singer in a band that gets steady gigs, I think. He's also the most sarcastic, cynical, smartass, pseudo-philosophical character in the movie. Vickie works at the Gap, has a lot of one-night stands, and worries about possibly contracting AIDS. Sammy... well, there's not much I can say about him, except that he's gay. And he's just sort of around, you know? It seemed to me like he didn't get a lot of lines in the movie, nor much of a story arc of his own. It really would have been nice if the character had been more fleshed out.

Well... one day Lelaina meets a guy named Michael Grates (Ben Stiller, who also directed the movie). He's an executive at an MTV-like cable channel called "In Your Face," and he soon starts dating Lelaina. He also shows her documentary to other people at the network, who choose to buy it... but of course they end up totally ruining Lelaina's vision. Meanwhile, throughout the film, it's clear that Troy also has a romantic interest in Lelaina, despite sleeping with other women (whom he clearly doesn't care about), and most of the time he acts like an ass toward Lelaina (and toward the world in general). So... of course the centerpiece of the movie becomes the love triangle between Lelaina, Troy, and Michael. Personally, I'd say she would have been better off with neither of them, but that's not how movies like this work. (Maybe it's a spoiler to say she does end up with one of them, but at least I won't say which one.)

And, I don't know what else to say about the plot. I guess it's kind of funny, sometimes, and kind of fun. So I'm glad to have seen it again, but I feel pretty indifferent about whether or not I'd ever want to watch it again. (The soundtrack remains awesome, though.)