Reality Bites

This Gen-X rom-com was quite a hit in its days and has one of Winona Ryder’s more memorable roles of her pre-bust career.

The film tells the story of four Houston college graduates making their first steps in the adult world. College valedictorian Lelaina (Winona Ryder) is working as an intern on a cheesy morning  TV show,  Troy (Ethan Hawke) is trying to make it with his band,  Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) works at Gap  and Sammy (Steve Zahn), well he doesn’t seem to do anything. Lelaina is divided between her attraction to best-friend  but too-cool-for-school Troy and a nice-guy yuppie (Ben Stiller) she meets by accident.

Scripted by Helen Childress (who to date has not got another script up) the film uses the device of switching between the audience’s point of view and a video that Lelaina is making and that gives the film its name. This should help to give the story some immediacy but all that it really does is break up the banality. In fact this is fairly typical of the film which has a veneer of timeliness but none of the depth to which it periodically alludes.

Making his directorial debut, Stiller is effective enough whilst as an actor still developing that endearing awkwardness that would become his stock in trade. Both Ryder and Hawke are good in their respective roles although there isn’t any real fire between them. Garofolo cracks wise and Stiller gives roles to his mother, Anne Meara, as a newspaper-woman and his sister Amy as Ryder's psychic phone buddy and if you’re real quick you’ll spot Renée Zellweger as Troy’s one-night stand early in proceedings (her first credited role). David Spade also appears in one of the film's funnier moments as the manager of a fast food joint.

Despite not realizing its potential issues and resolving in a familiar mush, Reality Bites is still entertaining enough as a snapshot of the times (MTV and grunge, Gap clothing and big shoulder suits, AIDS and casual sex and so on all to a contemporary pop soundtrack).

 

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