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Ben Stiller's directorial debut was this sporadically successful twentysomething comedy that tries too hard to codify the generational experience of its young adult characters. Winona Ryder plays a still-unformed woman struggling with career and relationship issues, Janeane Garofalo portrays her best friend, and Ethan Hawke and Stiller play the two lovers pursuing her. The story is as also about generation-X confusion over how to get by in a hand-me-down world with not much to get excited about, a world filled with a pop culture currency of bad music and poetry slams. The film's chief strength is its appealing cast, which is bolstered by appearances from David Spade, Renee Zellweger, Kevin Pollak, Jeanne Triplehorn, and Stiller's mother, Anne Meara.
--Tom Keogh
Ben Stiller's film is a romantic comedy about what has come to be called Generation X. The characters are just out of college, and they're not thrilled about their prospects: they're overeducated and underemployed, and no one seems to know, or care, what they're going through. The script, by Helen Childress, is packed with knowing pop-culture references, and the soundtrack is filled with the music of college-radio favorites like World Party and Juliana Hatfield. The picture has its charms: Stiller's direction gives it an appropriately loose, drifting rhythm; Winona Ryder, in the central role, has a fresh, natural style that makes even the most contrived dialogue sound authentic. But the story is essentially a thin and conventional romantic triangle, straight out of thirties Hollywood; the filmmakers try to disguise the fluffiness by unleashing a torrent of trash-culture allusions and sociological truisms. When the movie is over, you don't feel as if you had shared the experience of a new generation; you feel puzzled and vaguely crummy, as if you had just read a solemn news-magazine cover story about it. Also with Stiller, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, and John Mahoney. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006
The New Yorker
