7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mildly Entertaining- Good Chemistry Between Biggs and Suvari, August 19, 2005
Although "Loser" is a solid effort and is generally enjoyable, it was certainly not what director Amy Heckerling needed at that point in her career. After the great success of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Clueless" she pretty much went in the director dumper with this one. Ironically the problem was not her directing but her writing. Solid production could not entirely compensate for this flawed screenplay because the flaws are in the characters themselves, they are simply not believable.
This is usually fatal because it is hard for viewers to care about characters with whom they cannot identify. Fortunately for writer Heckerling, director Heckerling cast the best two actors in "American Pie", Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, as her leads. They have such unexpectedly good chemistry together that you will yourself to believe in them, even if Paul is moronically nice and Dora is moronically moronic (her failure to connect the bad relationship dots for almost the entire film is not consistent with a character who is portrayed as extremely perceptive and self-aware). Suvari looks and even sounds like Jennifer Jason Leigh which may have you flashing back to "Fast Times".
Excellent performances by Biggs, Suvari, and Greg Kinnear (as Professor Alcott) save the day or at least salvage the film. They get little assistance from anyone else in Heckerling's cast (although Dan Ackroyd is decent in a small and very straight role) as the supporting players are either neutral or less than zero. Worst of all are they guys who play Paul's three roommates. They start out as typically "Party Hard" college students but overnight morph into date rape scum and academic blackmailers. Heckerling provides nothing to explain this transformation, which is especially strange because she includes early scenes intended to show that one of the roommates is sincerely trying to help Paul with his adjustment to college in the big city.
Heckerling based her "Clueless" screenplay on Jane Austin's "Emma". Franz Kafka is her reference point for "Loser"; a strange choice given Kafka famous line "women are traps which lie in wait for men everywhere, in order to drag them down into the finite". The choice of the Dora Diamond name is an obvious homage to Kafka's girlfriend Dora Dymant. The screenplay for "Loser" is not a total loss, it has good individual lines like: "I love self-loathing complaint rock you can dance to".
Perhaps the best scene is Heckerling's homage to the Berkeley fountain scene in "The Graduate" as the dejected Paul wonders around the city while the soundtrack plays Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair". The rest of the soundtrack is also good.
Apparently Heckerling could not resist shooting herself in the foot at the very end as she included on-screen notes documenting the comeuppance received by each of the bad characters. Not only is this tired and unoriginal ("American Graffiti" and "Animal House" made use of this along with a high school film I judged last spring) but the notes themselves are not even mildly amusing.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cute and entertaining, December 30, 2000
I rented this movie on a snowy day along with several other films and was pleasantly surprised. I was looking for something light and fun and that is exactly what I got.
Jason Biggs, who played the charming but goofy lead in American Pie, is Paul a guy who moves from the mid-west to New York City to go to College and is immeadiately overwhelmed by "city" life. His roomates are horrible and only add to his inability to fit in.
In class Paul meets Dora, Mena Suvari - who was also in American Pie as well as American Beauty. As Paul gets to know Dora he begins to see that life in the big city is not all bad. Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari and Greg Kinnear were all good in this movie - the plot was not as strong as most of Amy Heckerling's past high school type comedy's such as Fast Time or Clueless but this film was still cute.
Loser would make a cute date film or would be good when you are looking for something light.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Seen "The Apartment"? Then You've Seen "Loser.", December 20, 2000
The plot of the movie starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine, and the plot of the movie starring Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari are one and the same. Hapless loser (Lemmon, Biggs) gets picked on by the guys at work/roommates in college, while carrying a torch for pretty girl (Maclaine, Suvari) who's enmeshed in an affair with boss/college professor (Greg Kinnear in LOSER). When girl nearly overdoses, loser comes to rescue.
Not that it's a bad movie; there are worse things that could be remade. And Suvari's hot; too bad she'd married. But it's a shame more people in Hollywood can't be original.
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