Overrated and overhyped

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

It's the suburban neighborhood of Burnfield in Austin, Texas. Slackers hang out behind the convenience store that is operated by the Choudhurys. Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi) is dating Sooze (Amie Carey). She wants to go to NYC to do alternative art but he refuses to do anything. Jokester Buff (Steve Zahn) works at the pizza joint. Tim (Nicky Katt) is ex-military with anger issues. Bee-Bee (Dina Spybey-Waters) is Sooze's friend. They come looking for Pony who was Jeff's friend and is now famous. A confrontation with the Choudhurys scatters the group. Pony (Jayce Bartok) shows up with publicist Erica (Parker Posey) and find the group. Jeff holds some resentment as he has a different memory of the start of Pony's band.It's one rambling night in the burbs written by Eric Bogosian and directed by Richard Linklater. It has some good actors. For some reason, I keep thinking of 'Waiting for Guffman'. In that movie, Guffman is a red herring and it works better. This movie turns aimless after Pony arrives. He's the goal and the movie loses its emphasis. The movie would be much better to climax with his arrival and end with a complete blowout with Jeff in that parking lot. The last half loses all the tension for me. The movie is 2 hours and could easily lose some of the second half.

Richard Linklater's adaptation of Eric Bogosian's subUrbia is revelatory in the smaller sense because, like any good play, it follows the characters personalities by way of where they're at in the location(s), and their conflicts, even if things involving the characters are fairly simplistic. With these guys and girls in their early 20s, there's not much to do, and little to aspire to. Jeff (Ribisi) knows he doesn't know what he wants to do, and is almost perfectly comfortable with that, even if his frustration comes out all the time; Tim (Katt, maybe his best performance, if a little limited) is an ex-dish washer from the army who is about as aggravated as imaginable, but often with a seething angst under the surface as faux anarchist aspirations; Soozie (Carey) is the typical girl who wants to get out of town and do something and bring along a guy- in this case quasi-boyfriend Jeff- who isn't too interested in it for reasons of hesitation in the guise of pragmatism; Buff (a pure goof-ball Zahn) has had his brain melted by alcohol and marijuana, and yet is very sweet and like a kind of Harpo with a Beavis & Butthead complex; and Pony (Barok) is the nerdy goodie-too-shoes who got out of town and became a star, but plays insufferable music and is a Primadonna.Around these characters, plus a semi-rehabilitated alcoholic Spybey's Bee-Bee (who reveals this only later on in the film, maybe the most TV-movie but disquieting in suburban tragedy of the bunch), Linklater uses Bogosian's impressive dialog to make this occasionally very funny, mostly due to Zahn's random antics involving himself throwing around objects (including people sometimes), and with the zinger one-liners from sardonic Ribisi, but also more contemplative about the nature of the 90s youth slummers. It's appropriate that Ebert made comparisons to Waiting for Godot, as it has that quality of digging very harshly and in a half-satiric half-naturalistic manner. It may be a parody of pretension seeing Sooze do her interpretive dance, but maybe it isn't at the same time, which lends the humor of seeing her as a double-edged sword: if one's around this age, if not even from this generation, there's probably someone in a group like this who has misguided creativity. Or Katt's character, who is maybe the most stereotypical, particularly in the heated arguments with a convenience store owner (Naidu, far removed from his Office Space role if just as anxious), but has inklings of truth to him as a representation of the real losers among the slackers.And then Ribisi, the 'hero' of the story, is actually kind and 'true', as he tries to see it, but is there giving commentary on situations, like Pony doing an impromptu musical performance for his former high-school buddies in a laundromat parking lot, and is also only so much critical of himself. It's basically a small view into people who you probably might see sometime going to a 7-11 if you're in a suburban malaise kind of town where all the practical things- eating, finding maybe one girl or guy, getting laundry done, getting good and drunk, and education- can be done, but it's also a trap where the loop inspires feelings of change, minor fun, and indifference, as well as the usual disgust. Towards the end if does lean towards the preachy: the altercations between Katt and Nazeer are the least effective portions, and even the disturbing fate of Bee-Bee reeks of a contrivance that can only come from a play. But there's a lot of rich material here- if not as wholly successful as Linklater's most successful portrait in Dazed and Confused, or as ambitious as Slacker- and it merits a repeat viewing sometime, most likely without the aid of much alcohol, which the characters here take as a sort of assist in making things even more dull and, if you're Zahn, a lot more fun in a distanced way.

Suburbia is without a doubt the best movie I have ever seen dealing with young adult angst. No, there is no excessive drug abuse and there is no moral tale to tell about the dangers of leading a overly hedonistic lifestyle. In fact, Suburbia steers clear of the usual teen/young adult stereotypes found in films such as Kids and Requiem for a Dream. Unlike those films, this movie will not give you the comfort of being a spectator watching a train wreck of a life. Instead Suburbia will show you something so realistic that the characters on screen could be you and that their problems could in fact be your own problems, which is what makes this film so unbelievably powerful.Released in 1996, this overlooked gem is about a group of friends who waste their days hanging out at the parking lot of a local convenience store. The film centers around the story of Jeff... a twenty-something guy who doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. Jeff's girlfriend, Sooze, is a zealous feminist performance artist wannabe with dreams of someday going to art school in New York. Jeff's two friends, Buff and Tim, are also drifting through life and not doing anything especially important. Buff works at a local pizzeria and does nothing but make up stories about getting laid and Tim spends his days and nights drinking alcohol. And Sooze's friend, Bee-Bee, is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict fresh out of rehab. The only person to leave and escape the suburbs was their old high school friend Pony... who left the suburbs and is now returning as a up and coming rock star. When Pony arrives onto the scene in a limousine with his nicely dressed publicist Erica the cast of characters react to his presence in variety of different ways. Buff and Sooze are both intrigued by Pony's success while Jeff and Tim are jealous of it. Bee-Bee is pretty much forgotten.... and she never let's her feelings be known to the rest of the characters.... She takes everything deep within herself and is perhaps the most self-destructive/self-loathing one out of them all.In the end, Suburbia doesn't provide you with any clear answers or solutions, but it does raise a number of relevant social questions. As a young adult, this movie had a massive affect on me and it made me question the direction/course of my own life. I really think that this is one of the best movies I have ever seen and the script, acting, and filming was all top notch. However, there are certain things and elements in this film that make it sort of dated. This movie is obviously set during the 90's, but I really think that the messages found within this movie could still be applied to today's youth. This film really paints an ugly picture of the suburbs as a flat, plain, dull, and genuinely depressing landscape that breeds apathy in people.Check this movie out. You will not regret it.

I'm a big fan of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, as well as the excellent, yet little known 'Tape' - but this film, SubUrbia (silly 'U' in the title), doesn't live up to the high standard of the latter mentioned films. Linklater obviously has respect for drama and dialogue, but he's let himself down here because a lot of the action and words in the film are silly, and delivered by a bunch of caricatures. We've got the irritating feminist, the famous guy trying to hang out with his old friends, a rich bitch with a heart of gold, a drunk who cant take his beer, a drunk who can, a girl out of rehab and a guy who holds everything together, simply by being more drab than the rest of them. The cast try their best with their characters, and the film isn't 'boring' - but it stinks of a decent film striving for greatness, and it never even nearly achieves it. The plot is basically about a bunch of Americans 'kids' that hang around parking lots, as they have nothing else to do. The film takes place around the same time that some guy they used to know, now a big rock star, is coming home to 'hang out' with them.Not much of this film is really believable. I don't think that Giovanni Ribisi's character would ever go out with the irritating feminist, for example, and a series of things like this make the film really difficult to get along with. The film is based on a play by Eric Bogosian, so it's unfair to blame Linklater (who I actually like) for the film's shortcomings with the characters; but to be fair, his direction is lethargic and doesn't really get along with the hip style that the film feels like it should have. Most of the characters are annoying rather than likable, and this means that by the time of the ending; you really don't care what happens. This is made worse by the fact that this is one of those 'ambiguous' films that leaves itself wide open at the end. Writers really need to learn when to, and when not to, use an ending like this. Ambiguous endings simply don't work when it doesn't matter what happens, and rather than making you think as the writer intended; it just turns you off. I appreciate this film a little because I like dialogue; but to be honest, there isn't a lot I can recommend it for. I do like the song, "A Town Without Pity", used in the opening credits though.