Letterboxd — Your life in film

This review reportedly contains spoilers. I can handle the truth.

This movie might be okay if you saw it before age 10 or before the 80s ended. Other than that, this movie sucks.

Richard Linklater doesn't get his due for the influence he's had on the way that mundane stories can be told in extraordinary ways. Linklater definitely paved the way for (or completely influenced) people like Kevin Smith, Mark Duplass, Lena Dunham and Judd Apatow (it's hard to imagine Freaks & Geeks existing without Dazed & Confused).

This movie is amazing, though. These characters feel like you grew up with them and none of them feel cliché or like place holders for more interesting characters that Linklater never got around to writing. We get glimpses of things that have happened or will happen beyond the one day the film is set in without dwelling on those things or insulting the audience's intelligence. Sure, a character kisses a girl behind his girlfriend's back, but is there a huge Hollywood cliché fight where the girlfriend finds out via a friend's drunken slip of the tongue? Nope. Because life's not really like that. But life is exactly like this movie.

This is one of the first "grown up movies" I ever loved that was outside of my wheelhouse at age 13 or so. (That wheelhouse being "Freddy movies" and "slapstick comedies.") I haven't seen it since watching it all day every day for a summer or two at that age, but I'm glad it (mostly) holds up well.

Some of the details have been parodied to death in the years since this came out, which kinda makes it hard to take seriously now after 20 years, but the core of the movie is still powerful and that ending is a punch to the gut.

The writing in this is pretty generic and one dimensional. There are a few things that surprised me near the end, though. Sam Raimi's direction is great. All the trick shots and Raimi-Violence work fantastically here, especially a scene where someone realizes they've been shot when they notice a hole in their shadow. Brilliant.

Some people have called this a parody of westerns and a black comedy, which I didn't really see. Usually I'm pretty clued-in on that sorta stuff, as I've gotten into fist fights trying to explain that Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a comedy, but I didn't really get that vibe here (for the most part, anyway. There are flashes of comedy and satire, I suppose). Then again, I've seen like 2 westerns in my entire life, so maybe I'd pick up on those parody queues if I were more familiar with the genre.

Anyway, Sam Raimi (and the great cast) turned a very forgettable script into a decent movie with some very memorable visuals.