DAZED AND CONFUSED
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Rory Cochrane, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp. Screenplay/Director: Richard Linklater.
I have this sneaking suspicion that the extent to which viewers can appreciate DAZED AND CONFUSED may be limited by how readily they recognize it as a perfect capsule of mid-70s youth culture. It's a clever and completely un-self-conscious portrait of pot-smoking, beer-drinking teenagers revelling in the awareness that right now, nothing else really matters. As frequently as people tend to toss out comparisons between films, I think I can safely say that what AMERICAN GRAFFITI was to 1962, DAZED AND CONFUSED is to 1976.
Like AMERICAN GRAFFITI, DAZED AND CONFUSED takes place entirely in one 24-hour period, the last day of school of 1976, and follows several students episodically. Randy "Pink" Floyd (Jason London), the starting quarterback, is struggling with whether or not to sign the anti-drug pledge required by his coach. Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) is an incoming freshman trying to escape the traditional hazing inflicted by sadistic seniors like O'Bannon (Ben Affleck). Mike (Adam Goldberg), Tony (Anthony Rapp) and Cynthia (Marissa Ribisi) are nerdy school newspaper-types philosophizing about the pointlessness of their lives. And Slater (Rory Cochrane) is simply on an endless search for good weed. Their one collective goal for the evening: to find a good party.
Writer/director Richard Linklater's first feature was SLACKER, a quirky but gimmicky look at apathetic twenty-somethings that established his talent for creating unique and amusing characters. In DAZED AND CONFUSED, he takes a look at the proto-SLACKER, with delightful results. While many of the characters are recognizable high school types, what I found original was that these were types I actually recognized from high school, not from *movies* about high school. Cool but basically decent Randy interacts convincingly with both his jock buddies and the inexperienced Mitch. O'Bannon is the classic high school jerk, arbitrarily feigning a punch at someone walking by him in the hall. Tony is the nice guy/geek who timidly tries to impress a cute freshman (the appealing Christina Hinojosa). My personal favorite was Wooderson (Matthew McConnagher), a slimy college-ager who hangs around with high schoolers to remain king of the hill and to pick up high school girls. Linklater gives them sparkling dialogue, daring to let his characters talk like teenagers actually talk. The one major character failing in DAZED is the absence of any equally interesting female characters; many could be interchangeable. This is a male coming-of-age film first and foremost, but it could have been more inclusive.
As a film without a real plot, DAZED depends on set pieces and atmosphere. The success of the former is hit and miss. There's a fun chase as several junior high schoolers run for their lives from the hazing-happy seniors-to-be. The hazing of the junior high girls is lively, as is a wacky monologue by the stoned Slater about George and Martha Washington's fondness for marijuana. However, there's a fair amount of dead space, and it's left to the cast of unknowns to fill it. They are generally personable enough to do so, particularly Wiggins and Cochrane, but not always.
As for atmosphere, it's dead on. DAZED captures 1976 brilliantly, from the bell bottoms and feathered hair to the soundtrack of early hard rock classics to a pair of statues painted to look like members of KISS. The drug and alcohol use is matter-of-fact, free of anachronistic moralizing. The production design had to be perfect, and it is. Anyone who can't quite recall a time when sex was safe and far fewer kids "just said no" should take a look just for the sake of historical accuracy.
It's impossible for me to determine whether those not in my age bracket will be as enamored of DAZED AND CONFUSED as I was. It's a slight, loopy little film with no pretensions, and it was a page right out of my own youth. I don't know ... maybe you had to be there.
Of course, *I* didn't inhale.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 joints: 7.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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