If your these guys, reality does bite.
A small circle of friends (Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo and Steve Zahn) suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Reality Bites can only be labeled as a "Gen X" film, that shows a whole bunch of losers after college talking about TV and their life in general. It's kind of like me and my friends on a broing saturday night but instead there obviously has to be a love triangle.
The film is directed by an early young Ben Stiller, and you can tell with it's fresh feeling and comedy. If you want to look at how it was to be straight out of college in Generation X well then here's your film just don't base this.
I will give it credit and say it is a good fresh story about love and confusion in Gen X, but it starts to get a little obvious. The film started out really good and funny but soon starts to descend into a very predictable love story and it starts to get really cheesy.
The screenplay is very witty and actually surprisingly very insightful. The screenplay is written like how real people talk and it is, they each share insight on life and it's very neat to see different opinions from all these different characters.
Acting in Reality Bites is actually very good. Winona Ryder plays her job really well and plays a girl that she has played in all her other films, but this one is different as she is fed up with life and how nothing is going right for her. Stiller does a credible job as well, but Ethan Hawke mostly stands out in my mind. He's very witty, funny, but also kind of a d**k but you still can connect to him cause he is as fed up with life as everyone else but he has more promise and just chooses not to use it.
The love story was nothing new and I felt like really did bring the story down. Also, at the end of the film until the credits there is not a very good respect for Stiller's character and we don't quite find out what was to come of him.
Consensus: Though not the definitive Generation X film, it is still a fresh look at people who don't understand what their lives have to come of them in Gen X.
7/10=Rental!!!
