MovieChat Forums > Reality Bites (1994) Discussion > This movie looked dated by 1996, '97

This movie looked dated by 1996, '97

posted 12 years ago by Manth_Sigdaw
9 replies | jump to latest

I never saw this movie in 1994, even though I was a teenager at the time and about 5 years younger then these characters. So I guess I was ripe to idolize these older, cooler 20 somethings. I was 18, 19 in 1994, but I didn't see the movie until a few years later in 1997. By the late 90s, this movie already looked absolutely ridiculous and embarrasingly dated. Now there were plenty of grunge going on in the early-mid 90s, but hardly anyone really acted like these idiots in real life.

And these characters are are all stereotypes and caricutures of slackers/stoners from every other era and movie made. i.e., people who act way smarter and intellectual then they really are, quoting Thoreau and Kurt Vonnegut, but stuck in dead end jobs while trying to pass off being a stagnant loser as something hip and cool to aspire to.

[–] marchug 11 years ago

I 100% agree.

[–] chas437 11 years ago

I think this became dated about a week after its release.

Still, it can be appreciated for how ridiculous it was. Generation X never really existed, which makes this even more comical.

"For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest"

[–] TMC-4 11 years ago

http://officialfan.proboards.com/thread/501535/most-90s-movie?page=1

[–] jdchisholm 11 years ago

I would say by 95' this movie looked outdated hell even by late 94 it did. The Grunge image in the movie and the slacker image was a little overemphasized. I still like the movie but it hasn't aged well.

[–] spookyrat1 9 years ago

Agreed. The slacker image still works, when played for genuine laughs, which were few and far between in this piece.🐭

[–] bishop-69757 9 years ago

By 2000 the movie felt 20 years old. The grunge years were so short.

[–] gcarras (2778) 8 years ago

But the endlessly popular classic by Lisa Loab and Nine Stories is in it, Stay, and she's still a popular attraction. If Mad men';s sexism can still be popular then a classy nerdy girl can too.,

[–] mobocracy (898) 8 years ago

I think the big problem with this movie was that it came out at the point where Gen X and its trappings, "alternative/grunge rock" and the general lifestyle were reaching peak commercial exploitation, and this movie was just part of that trend.

FWIW, I don't think Gen X (and I say this as a Gen X-er) was a substantial enough cultural phenomenon or demographic group to really develop a substantial enough elements to stand up on its own. It borrowed too much from 1970s punk to seem completely new, and its rapid commercialization combined with the growth of the Internet allowed it to dissolve too fast to develop a kind of lasting nostalgia that other generations had.

I think the movie "Slacker" did a much better job in more realistic way of portraying an organic Gen X culture. I felt like the characters in that movie were really representative of the kinds of people I saw living in a slacker enclave in Minneapolis.

What I think is interesting about whatever Gen X actually was, it was the last generation that defined its cultural norms in a pre-Internet organic way. All generations after that are heavily influenced by the Internet and its widespread diffusion of cultural concepts and the relentless diving into narrow interest groups.

[–] BourbonKing (5782) 7 years ago

This movie had contrived written all over it. It took the cachet of rising stars Wynona Ryder and Ethan Hawke and tried to capitalize on another contrived media narrative known as "angst-ridden Gen Xers". It's funny looking back at this at how short-lived the whole Gen X thing was. It's nowhere as big and lingering as the current attention given to the Millennial generation, but that's probably because most Millennials are children of Baby Boomers who themselves are still a big media-grabbing generation.