My Thoughts: A Shock to the System (1990)

A Shock to the System, a pic about an under-appreciated ad man who sets out to exterminate everyone who serves as a roadblock on his path to success, is a fun watch, but little else.  The comedy is generally to my taste–pitch-black.  Michael Caine is, honestly, in one of his best five roles of all time.  Swoosie Kurtz, as his domineering wife, and Elizabeth McGovern, as a beauty at the ad agency where he works, are both fine.  Peter Reigert, as the youn’in whose destined to get the promotion Caine’s character deserves and yearns for, is quite funny.  So what’s missing?

After a second viewing, I’m certain that the script just doesn’t hold together.  There are brilliant scenes of dark comedy followed by pedestrian sequences of cat-and-mouse police games.  The ending, far too predictable, isn’t nearly as over-the-top as it should be.

I do know one thing, though:  nothing that goes wrong is Michael Caine’s fault.

Reality Blows: The Best and Worst of Gen-X Flicks

Yeah, okay, I’m definitely a few years beyond the Generation-X cutoff, but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy movies about our favorite late-’80s and ’90s outcasts, slackers and burnouts.

Right now, I’m writing a series of reviews of Gen-X movies, regardless of whether they’re good or not.  And I’m playing the professor and assigning letter grades to each movie…something I almost never do.

To kick things off, I watched Reality Bites, a movie that’s supposedly all about Generation-X, a week ago.  I sort of remember giving it a spin a few years back and, at the time, I thought it was pretty damn funny and perceptive.

My current (and less favorable) assessment:

Reality Bites (1994)

Reality Bites, Ben Stiller’s directorial debut, is an unworthy Gen-X staple, a mostly cliché story of four Houston college grads who wander out of graduation into dead-end jobs.  While its opening third is perceptive and funny, it ultimately becomes just another formulaic study of young adults trying to find themselves and fall in love in a mean corporate world.

The pic stars Winona Ryder as Lelaina, valedictorian of her college class, who, armed at all times with a video camera, obsessively films all her friends being “spontaneous.” They include the sharp-tongued slacker musician Troy (Ethan Hawke), the funny and sensitive Vicki (Jeneane Garofalo) and the shy Sammy (Steve Zahn).