Loser (2000) 2 stars out of 4. Starring Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Greg Kinnear, Zak Orth, Tom Sadoski and Jimmi Simpson. Music by David Kitay. Written and directed by Amy Heckerling. Rated PG-13.
"Loser" is no winner. This youthful comedy, written and directed by Amy Heckerling, is rather bland actually.
It's also a bit sweet. But most of all, it is very uninvolving.
The movie gives you a feeling of deja vu, that you've seen this story before - somewhere.
Maybe it is because Heckerling's characters are ill-defined, lacking any motivation. They are mostly sketched-in types, plot devices.
They include:
- Paul Tannek (Jason Biggs), the small-town scholarship winner attending college in the Big Apple. He's a nice guy who no one - well, at least his three roommates - likes. Why?
Simple, he's at the university to study and learn, plus he wears a funny hat.
Paul's a square. He neither parties nor chases women.
- Dora Diamond (Mena Suvari), the impressionable student having an affair with self-centered, smarmy professor Edward Alcott (Greg Kinnear).
She is blind to Paul's kindness and affection, while explaining away the condescending manner in which she is treated by Alcott.
- Adam (Zak Orth), Noah (Tom Sadoski) and Chris (Jimmi Simpson), Paul's supposedly ultra-hip, sophisticated roommates, are slugs. They are so dense, so uncool, that it's difficult to swallow the concept that they are the guys others want to emulate.
Heckerling, by creating these three stooges as caricatures, has diluted the very point she is trying to make.
Compared to those bums, Paul is a winner. And that seems to be the film's point. In the eyes of the audience, Paul is no loser. He is a very nice guy, though a bit naive and too trusting.
But Heckerling has stacked the deck too much in his favor.
The three geeks are such morons they have to stoop to using date-rape type drugs to procure women.
Paul, meanwhile, allows them to run roughshod over him. Why? It is never explained. Obviously, he doesn't want to be like them, nor does he want their companionship.
Paul is staying true to himself, being a good guy, helpful to others. He is smarter than he lets on to others.
So the big question remains: Why at a big New York university, can Paul only make contact with three losers, plus one flaky young woman?
Heckerling ignores that aspect all together.
The cast, however, makes the most with the material at hand.
Biggs, so memorable in "American Pie, "is rather passive as Paul. He is more victim than protagonist. He plays Paul as if he were a blank slate. You only know him as a decent, quiet guy trying to go along to get along.
Suvari, who also appeared in "American Pie" and was featured in the Oscar-winning "American Beauty, "has a problem similar to Biggs in defining her character.
Obviously, she is an intelligent young woman. That is why her attraction to, and her relationship with, her professor seems more like a plot contrivance than an avenue her character would actually explore.
She seems too self-assured, too aware of herself, to accept the belittling constantly heaped upon her by Alcott. It does not make sense.
"Loser" is a very predictable movie. You know what's going to happen and who is going to wind up with whom 10 minutes into the feature.
It's not a very memorable movie. It's like a fast-food snack, fulfilling at the moment, then quite forgettable.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, IN. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or at bobbloom@iquest.net Bloom's reviews can be found on the Internet Movie Database at: http: www/imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Bob+Bloom
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