REALITY BITES
A film review by Dorothy Pomerand
Copyright 1994 Dorothy Pomerand
Staring: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller Directed by: Ben Stiller
When I first heard about REALITY BITES, I was scared. I hate anything that tries to generalize my generation. A few years ago I was one of the many people interviewed for a book called THE 13th GENERATION. I gave my version of where we stand as did everyone else, and the book ended up being something about people who didn't exist. It was an abstraction of what a few cranky young adults said. I feared that REALITY BITES would show the same tendency towards over-generalization that would give us all the opportunity to say, "Well, things suck but at least it's not our fault and there is nothing we can do about it." I was wrong.
REALITY BITES did scare me when I finally saw it because it was so dead-on. It might as well have been my friends and me on the screen. It was so close that I didn't even feel like I was watching a movie, I felt like I was hanging out with some friends.
REALITY BITES is the story of Lelaina, a bright, ambitious, wanna-be documentary film maker. Upon graduating from college, Lelaina has moved into an apartment with her best friend Vicki and is working as a PA at a morning show. At the same time she is filming a documentary about her friends including her best buddy Troy (Ethan Hawke). Troy is a SNAG (Sensative New Age Guy) and a Slacker (see Richard Linkletter's film) who can't quite seem to get off his duff. He keeps getting fired from jobs until he finally moves in with Lelaina and Vicki to put some sexual tension into the film.
Once Troy moves in Lelaina finds herself involved with a killer yuppie named Michael played uncomfortably by Ben Stiller. This causes even more animosity and tension between Lelaina and Troy, and after Lelaina looses her job, everything begins to spiral downward. We learn that Troy is pining away for his dying father, Vicki is worried about dying of AIDS, and their other friend Steve is getting ready to come out to his parents.
The plot is only part of the show. The main thrust of this movie is how well Ben Stiller has capture the language and the attitudes of the 20-somethings. There is always music in the background and everyone is always singing. They constantly make references to TV shows. One of the best lines is when Lelaina comforts her friend Vicki by telling her that "Melrose Place" is a really good show. Troy knows the meaning of the word irony but he can't hold a job, their drinking games consist of naming "Good Times" episodes and they can all sing the words to several School House Rocks.
The question is, how does all this translate to the average viewer? Probably not very well. I loved this film because it seemed to have so much to do with me. I am just out of college struggling to find my way in this "real world" and trying to figure out what life is about and how to navigate through it. I also knew all the tunes and almost all the TV references (a fact I'm not exactly proud of). To the average viewer however, this will probably play like a weak love story. You know who Lelaina is going to end up with even though he's a complete dick. The camera work is average. There is some use of video but nothing we haven't seen before and not done in any sort of interesting way. Sometimes Lelaina's camera seems to pick up things that were just put in to make the movie more interesting. There is one very ironic part where Ben Stiller has sold Lelaina's tapes to an MTV-type company that he works for (in Houston?!?) and they have turned it into a trashy video called "Reality Bites". Does this reflect on the movie that Ben Stiller has actually made? You be the judge.
This movie is really about average; however, for me it was a bizarre surreal experience. It made me see that my problems are so typical that there they are up on the screen. Suddenly, things don't seem quite so bad. This movie is funny and entertaining, but if you already have kids, you might want to save your 6.50.
Dorothy
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