KICKING AND SCREAMING
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
KICKING AND SCREAMING is a good, but too frequently trite movie about the superficiality and meaninglessness of young people's lives today. It tells the story of a group of boys just graduating from college, and although there are many girls in the cast, they are in secondary roles. It is being billed as a droll comedy, but it really isn't. The movie at its best is an insightful satire on young adulthood. I laughed a couple of times, but more often I was either touched by the dialog or just bored.
First time writer and director Noah Baumbach assembled a cast of typical college kid looking actors and actresses. Most have been in other shows about Generation Xers that either I have never seen or that I hated, i.e., shows like NAKED IN NEW YORK or AMATEURS. None had been in the absolutely wonderful BEFORE SUNRISE which is proof positive that shows about people in their 20s can be both well made and not depressing.
In KICKING AND SCREAMING's circle of friends are Grover (Josh Hamilton), Max (Christopher Eigeman), Skippy (Jason Wiles), and Ottis (Carlos Jacott). The perpetual student and local bartender, Chet (Eric Stoltz) has "taken every class in school" and yet is still a student. Chet says that he can not understand why people want to be lawyers or doctors, when they can be students. Chet is also the only one interested in real knowledge. The others spend their time in make believe trivia game shows and appear to have vast surface knowledge about everything like "the names of eight movies where monkeys played a leading role", but no interest in the meaning of anything. One semester Skip takes only: Ethics, Scandinavian Literature, and Personality.
Their girlfriends are Jane (Olivia D'Abo), Miami (Parker Posey), and Kate (Cara Buono). Finally, Elliott Gould, an actor who was never very good, is a complete embarrassment in this movie as Grover's dad. He demonstrate what happens to a bad actor when he goes down hill. Luckily, he has a limited number of scenes.
Two of the main girls in the movie, Jane and Miami, have an unusual way to flirt with boys. They take the retainers out of their mouths and hold them like cigarettes or twirl them around their fingers and then get their boyfriends to hold them. Weird.
The movie has way too many failed attempts at sight gags. Jacott, who is almost as bad as Gould, wears a pajama top with a tie to the graduation party. In another scene, someone breaks a glass in his kitchen and then puts a sign that says "broken glass" over it rather than sweeping it up. Baumbach should have concentrated on the dialog which is the high point of the show and given up on the sight gags.
Baumbach's dialog ranges from the insightful to the bizarre. Chet is the philosopher even when serving drinks. To a regular who thinks Chet is nuts, Chet muses, "If Plato is a fine red wine, then Aristotle is a dry martini." In another scene, Max, talking about his parents says, "It's like my real parents were assassinated, and they were next in line for the job. They fight a lot, but they'd never split." Jane keeps calling Grover from Prague and leaving messages on his answering machine about everything, even her tour of Auschwitz.
Although the guys and gals hang out a lot, none of them have more than a superficial interest in each other or in life itself for that matter. I found this part of the movie believable but incredibly sad. The kids smoke a lot, and drink all of the time. I am sorry to report that movie seems to say that you can drink Scotch and Colt 45 malt liquor with one large swig after another, and yet never get mush mouthed, stumble, or have it in any way affect your body or your behavior. Since the film is clearly targeted at the 12-29 age groups, it is freighting that this movies trivializes alcoholism so much. Most kids in the show have major drinking problems that the picture makes almost invisible.
Other than the two pieces of terrible acting mentioned previously, the other actors and actresses were good. Eric Stoltz who needs good direction to be effective got it from Baumbach. Stoltz has been pathetic in some films (NAKED IN NEW YORK and SAY ANYTHING) and quite good in others (ROB ROY and THE WATERDANCE). Here he was the best person in the cast.
The almost sepia colored photography by Steven Bernstein and the depressing and lifeless costumes by Mary Jane Fort add to the overall moroseness of the show. Bernstein likes using a series of black and white stills that dissolve into a lightly colored set of stills which then dissolve into a live action scene. It is a technique that works well at focusing the audience's attention on the character's expression.
KICKING AND SCREAMING runs a quick 1:34 thanks to editing by Julie Dole. It is rated R for heavy drinking that teaches a bad lesson, heavy smoking (ditto), some bad language, some nudity, a little sex, but no violence. If you let your teenagers go, go with them if you can and talk about the movie afterwards, especially the drinking, the smoking, and the real reasons for going to college. This could be a good opportunity to open up some communication with them. I found myself touched by the movie, and although Baumbach's film showed a lot of potential, too much was unrealized for me to be able to recommend it. I give the movie my average movie rating of **.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: November 11, 1995
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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