Surprisingly incoherent and boring

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

I don't have a high bar for stoner movies, I tend to like most of them for the usual reasons. I came upon this in a 4/20 list from the main page of this site and as i hadn't seen it(or don't remember), I read the load of positive reviews and thought "awesome, a good stoner movie I haven't seen!". You all lied. Shame on you.This movie was almost terrible. A few amusing/reminiscent moments are all that separates this from total and utter garbage. Jack Black is not an actor I like, yet somehow manages to be the best part of this movie... with his 5 minutes of screen time.Do yourself a favor and pick a different stoner flick.

I lived next door to the author in 1980 when he first moved out to Portland from Downer's Grove, Ill. with two of his high school buds. He seemed like a normal-enough guy, though he had a lot of artistic pretensions. Within a few years, he jumped into Portland's post-punk music scene with buddy Phil and a few others, and a band that definitely wasn't headed anywhere, although it got him a lot of action, including a fling with Courtney Love in her Portland groupie days. He seemed to think his musical prospects were good enough to move to San Francisco, then N.Y.C.I was surprised to hear that he got a publishing deal in '95 after the band crashed and burned. Courtney Love's name seemed to be the clincher. I have no idea how the movie came about, especially with this cast, but I doubt that Gus Van Sant was involved. Anyway, the reviewers here seem to be unsure whether the lack of narrative focus is intentional or not, so I would just say that this is the work of a fairly intelligent guy who wants to be a writer, or artist or something, but doesn't have anything to say. Like Kerouac without the Benzedrine.

I liked this movie. It is very subtle and kind of vague but that makes it more realistic to me, because real life isn't like "American Pie" or "Reality Bites", it is sometimes slow, vague, and doesn't go from point A to B with one single plot or any continuity. It also seems a little less contrived than it's contemporaries such as "Slackers", "Chasing Amy", etc. I knew a guy that rented this movie with his Wife and her sister and they hated it while he liked it and sure enough they divorced within 2 months. So this movie was at least powerful enough to make them realize the differences in themselves, and if a movie is at least partially responsible for a divorce that makes it better than most of the garbage that Hollywood chucks out to the public.

One of the saddest experiences is encountering a movie that has almost all the right things to be successful. It has all the ingredients, perhaps all the right perspectives, but not the requisite skills to bring it to a coherence that pierces. This is one of those movies, and its apt that is about characters whose lives are in the same uncooked limbo.About the actors. The men in this all went on to greater careers, essentially doing the characters they do here. The women. Well, their careers have all been stuck, and yet they do at least as well here.One of these is Alica Witt. She was sort a special icon for a while after her remarkable one line in Lynch's otherwise disastrous "Dune." Lynch was so smitten that when Sting did Figgis' first movie, he clued him in. Figgus subsequently used her as an icon in "Liebstraum," and she appeared similarly in "Vanilla Sky," as a cinematic marker.Here she is early in her career, playing a woman on the edge. Its a typical role for an ingénue, a free spirit constrained by society and her own foibles that revolve around men. Natalie Porman made this role work in "Closer." Mia Kirshner did so in the much more complex "Exotica." Witt almost does here, and somehow the failure touches more.Here she is before unadvisedly removing that bump in her nose, trying her guts out. She is raped late in the story, and the few moments after — so far as I know — are the high point of her adult career.There's one sequence in the film that does work. It doesn't involve Witt. Luke Wilson's character is a pot dealer. He takes his new girlfriend on a collection trip to a camping commune, led by Jack Black. She has replaced Witt, though Witt found her to sponsor a show of Wilson's sophomoric art.Once they arrive everyone takes acid. The girl and Black (who is terrific) hit it off. Wilson hallucinates his mother into existence, where she serves an iridescent lemonade. This whole sequence works, and I imagine it was the first one created. There's nuance, and I prefer to believe that all that follows — even the existence of the Witt character — is part of the trip.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.