director
Richard Linklater
screenwriter
Eric Bogosian
based on
his play
producer
Anne Walker-McBay
cinematographer
Lee Daniel
music
Sonic Youth
editor
Sandra Adair
cast
Jayce Bartok (Pony)
Amie Carey (Sooze)
Nicky Katt (Tim)
Ajay Naidu (Nazeer)
Parker Posey (Erica)
Giovanni Ribisi (Jeff)
Samia Shoaib (Pakeesa)
Dina Spybey (Bee-Bee)
Steve Zahn (Buff)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 118m
u.s.
release: 2/7/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other richard
linklater films
reviewed on this website:
- the bad
news bears
- before
sunrise
(short
review)
- before
sunset
- the newton boys
- a scanner darkly
- school
of rock
- waking
life
|
Richard
Linklater specializes in movies about young people who aren't
going anywhere -- Slacker, Dazed and Confused,
Before Sunrise, and his
latest, subUrbia. Yet there's more going on in Linklater's
films than in most overplotted, hyperactive Hollywood movies.
He's a great minimalist: generally, he stakes out a 24-hour period,
introduces his characters, and lets them talk, hang out, connect
or not connect. Linklater's work might be summed up by John Lennon's
line that life is what happens when you're busy making other
plans.
subUrbia is Linklater's first project that he didn't also
write. His collaborator here is the acidic playwright Eric Bogosian
(Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll), adapting his own play about
a group of college-age slackers who haunt a convenience-store
parking lot. With Bogosian on board, the movie carries a more
didactic message -- and is a bit darker -- than Linklater's fans
may be used to. The tension underneath the movie is the friction
between Bogosian's tense urban sensibility and Linklater's relaxed,
generous style. Bogosian forces Linklater to look at kids who
won't escape and grow up to be successful indie filmmakers.
The closest thing subUrbia has to a hero is Jeff (Giovanni
Ribisi, seen on Friends as Phoebe's Beavis-like half-brother),
who lives in a pup tent in his parents' garage and has vague
dreams of being a writer. Jeff's girlfriend Sooze (Amie Carey)
has similarly vague ambitions; she's the type who wants to say
deep things with her performance art and then has to explain
to her baffled audience exactly what she's saying. Sooze
wants to go to New York to be brilliant and controversial, while
Jeff doesn't plan on vacating the pup tent any time soon.
Jeff hangs out with two drunks he grew up with: Tim (Nicky Katt),
who dropped out of the Air Force and is bitter and sarcastic
about everything, and Buff (Steve Zahn), a more cheerful loser
who spins around in happy oblivion. The stage (and it does
sometimes feel like a stage, despite Linklater's best efforts)
is set for confrontation between these slackers and a local-boy-made-good
named Pony (Jayce Bartok), who hit it big as a rock star and
is now passing through town with a limo and a hip publicist (the
ubiquitous Parker Posey, indie cinema's Michelle Caine).
Pony, whose physical resemblance to Linklater may or may not
be a coincidence, at first comes off like a poseur. But the film
doesn't let the other characters off the hook that easily. As
fatuous as Pony sounds ("I'm an observer of life"),
at least he got out and did something, as opposed to hanging
around and talking about how it's pointless to do anything because,
like, it's all a big capitalist scam anyway, man.
subUrbia feels too mechanical at times, too symmetrical
and ironic in a way that works better on stage. There's a fake
death and a possible real one, and Linklater seems to chafe a
bit at the darkening tone; he's in his comic element when Buff
is whooping it up in the limo and swiping lawn leprechauns. Linklater
is clearly at ease with Buff; he's a drunken goofball and a liar,
but in his own way he's more honest than anyone else in the movie. |