THE DOOM GENERATION
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1995 Christopher Null
Good Lord, how did this film ever get made? As Gregg Araki's fifth feature, you'd figure he'd have learned *something* about movie making by now. Looks like I'm wrong again.
THE DOOM GENERATION, hands-down one of the most horrid examples of filmmaking I've seen in ages, is a brain-dead, post-modern love story. The plot (what there is of it) tells the moronic tale of Amy Blue (Rose McGowan), her boyfriend Jordan White (James Duval), and some guy they pick up called Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech). (Did you catch on to that ultra-clever color motif?) Altogether, these three embark on a nonsensical spree of sex, killing/mangling people, and then eating...and then repeating the cycle four or five times.
Along the way, Amy uses a wider variety of vulgar insults than I'd ever conceived of. Jordan pretty much just stands around, with Duval perfectly cast in the part of an idiot zombie teenager that makes you cringe just to look at him. I still can't figure out what Xavier's role was supposed to be all about, but I'm guessing Araki's "666," skull & crossbones, and Apocalypse references are supposed to indicate that Xavier's the devil. Oooooh, scary. If that was supposed to be a social or cultural statement, please pinch me.
Araki should, however, be thanked for the one distraction that keeps you from having to think too hard about the garbage on the screen: cameos galore! From Margaret Cho to ex-Brady Buncher Christopher Knight to Married With Children's Amanda Bearse to Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, there's enough washed-up stars and wannabes to dam a river with. It's cute, but I think Jon Waters squeezed the last ounce of life out of this stunt years ago.
I could go on about the poor or inappropriate lighting, cutesy direction, horrid dialogue, and overall silly atmosphere this film creates, but why bother? I think I've pretty much made my opinion clear by now. There's absolutely no reason to see the movie, and I'd rather watch the Weather Channel for two hours than sit through it again.
RATING: *1/2
\-------------------------------\ |* Unquestionably awful | |** Sub-par on many levels | |*** Average, hits and misses | |**** Good, memorable film | |***** Perfection | \-------------------------------\
-Christopher Null / null@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu -Movie Emporium (reviews) / http://www.notes.tpoint.net/emporium/ -Contributing Editor, FEEDBACK / http://www.eden.com/~feedback/ -E-mail requests to join the movie review mailing list
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