Customer Reviews

Stateside

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

First I want to say how I can see how people may not like this movie. But to an any kind of movie lover you will give it a chance and like it. I really enjoy it. I cannot wait for it to come on Showtime lately.

I want to say in regards to a review listed earlier about Sue being put in a mental institute for hating her Mom and writing smutty lettters. She was commited because she is a sex addict, watching the film during the therapy sessions you will hear Sue talk about how she wanted to do this guy and how she thought about him and so on.

I never got the impression Dory was in LA. I assumed and got from it that she was in the NYC area doing her work. I might be wrong on that by cannot say for sure.

I like the love story, it is diffrent and different is good nowadays. We need things changed up a bit. My hubby is a Marine so I might be bias here. But the thing I like about the Corps in it, is that it is not showing in depth of the Corps or over indulging it like other films do. My husband thinks it is a little quirky but he knows I like it.

Go to Showtime and catch it there right now. Either way I'm buying a copy here soon. I have a huge DVD collection and think it is worth the cost to have in anyone's collection. It is like a good old black and white love story for me to watch.

Did not care for her being Schitzo but what can you do?

For Film going pleasure STATESIDE is a poignant much underated labour of love. A low-budget, high-production story of comedy, drama, fun & adventure, love & loss between two characters from very different crossrooads whom make it through an interesting set of life circumstances that never quite seem outright predicatable as in other hollywood fodder.
Military cruelty & Mental-haeth issues are a major recurring theme throughout between characters Mark(Jonathan Tucker) who lands in the Marine Corps & Dori(Rachael Leigh Cook) a former actress/band-singer with schizophrenia. The 2 leads are perfect casting and playout an unusual yet believable romantic relationship when apart or together after long periods of seperation. Production standards by First Look Pictures & Writer/Director/Producer: Reverage Anselmo is "Superb", excellently supported by noteworthy Cast: Agnes Bruckner, Carrie Fisher, Joe Mantegna, Ed Begley,Jnr & Val Kilmer.
Watch out for a hystericaly funny uncredited guest-cameo by Penny Marshall as a loopy Hospital Nurse nearing films end,priceless!
All in all a contemporary love-story to warm the heart and humor enough tom ake you laugh. NOTE: Addresses the serious issues of Mental-Illness better than GIRL INTERUPTED.
Bonus: Movie Premiere Party
*Main Cast Interviews
*Behind the Scenes
*Director Interviews
*Boot camp
*Previews
*Commentary
Thoroughly Reccommended to ALL!

This movie is an underrated gem. If you're into unique and intriguing love stories, you'll certaintly love "Stateside". Both, Rachel Leigh Cook and Jonathan Tucker, who play the lead parts, are extremely talented, yet endearing young actors and this film just proves that. The story is highly engaging and thought-provoking. Definitely one of the best movies I've seen lately. A must-see one!

I loved this Movie ..I connected on some level to the Love of my life in my younger days and I could feel the wonderful vunerability of being in Love at such a irresponsible age ,when nothing was of consequence except your feelings for that person and her feelings for you ...nobody else mattered ...Life was so simple then ...no complications ...and then we Grow up(Mature) and we are told what we should look for in a Lifetime partner !!!..But these two Beautiful individuals in this movie make we believe that I was not wrong in how I felt twenty years ago ..and maybe there is still hope that I find my True love and feel the Passion all over again ...
all the cast give superb performances...Enjoy ..

In some respects,I prefer to see this than FMJ because there was more abuse to this recruit except for the blanket party in this movie. It's all about two screwed up people who is in love and they goes through all these changes that screw people up more. I just love all the Marine scenes.

I wanted to like this movie. Really I did. I came into watching it with the mindset of "This looks like it'll be good." Unfortunately, I was wrong.

"Stateside" is set in the early 80s, although there are points where it looks like the 50s. It is about a teenager named Mark, a member of a very rich family, who attends a Catholic school and seems to be something of a slacker. To me, the early part of this movie wasn't very well delineated - I didn't get a good feel for Mark's character at the beginning of the movie. He and his friend find out one of their friends/one of the guys' brothers (I think) has sex nightly with somebody in the class, a girl named Sue. Sue is bright and fiery and makes fun of Mark in class. So of course what is the logical course of action? Why of course Mark and his friend drive out to where Sue and other other guy make out every night. They knock the guy down, kidnap Sue, and drive away in their car very fast. If this doesn't make sense to you, don't worry, it doesn't make sense to me either. They get in a car wreck that paralyzes the head priest of Mark's Catholic school. In lieu of jail time, Mark has to join the Marines. Sue's mother (played hilariously by Carrie Fisher) finds smutty notes Sue has written to her boyfriend and reads them to Sue while she is in the hospital. Sue doesn't like her mother's scorn, so she runs out the door screaming. I can't say I blame her.

However, then we see Sue has been dumped in a mental institution. Apparently having sex with a boy and then not liking your mother sneering as she reads your private note to him is grounds for being committed. So be it. That strikes me as something more likely to happen in the 1930s, not the 1980s, but okay.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Dori is an actress and a rock star who can't do either well because she's distracted by her mental problems. Then she is gang-raped (apparently) by her roommates. Uh huh. She leaves L.A. to go to a mental institution in Connecticut. Her roommate is Sue.

While visiting Sue, Mark runs into Dori. He gets her wet with a drinking fountain and poof, they are in love.

I won't give away much more of the story, but it really doesn't matter, you can predict everything that's going to happen. If you predict that Mark and Dori fall in love the first day they spend together and have sex the first night, congratulations, you've unravelled one of the byzantine plot twists of the movie! If you predict Mark goes through some now-required "Full Metal Jacket" type scenes in the Marines with a drill sergeant (played by Val Kilmer) who drones the typical drill sergeant insults, you win a gold star.

Unfortunately, this movie gets few gold stars from me. The cast is great. Rachel Leigh Cook is hauntingly beautiful and does a good job as a schizophrenic young woman with what the script has given her. Jonathan Tucker is fine as Mark. Not superb or anything though. Agnes Bruckner is quite good as Sue, though her presence in the mental institution, while necessary, is incongruous. She doesn't seem to belong there. Val Kilmer brings more than you could expect to a rather thankless role as the drill sergeant. His speech to the recruits about finding yourself married to a foreign woman and responsibility was an amazing, great departure though, one of the strengths of the movie. The supporting cast of Ed Begley Jr, Carrie Fisher, Joe Mantegna, is all well above average.

I guess my problem with this movie is that it doesn't seem to know what it wants to do, it doesn't flow well, and while the booklet the DVD comes with professes it isn't "candy-coated" it certainly is melodramatic and oddly put together. I wasn't really sure what to think of Mark. He develops a burning passion for Dori in about a second, and it's probably only believable because RLC as Dori is so enchanting. Other than being suddenly passionate, though, I'm not sure there's much to Mark. He apologizes to the priest he cripped, so maybe he's learning lessons about life as he goes along. But right after he professes love for Dori Mark goes to a strip bar, gets raging drunk, dances with a stripper on the bar and falls off, breaking his leg. He tells everyone he fell off a helicopter and spends most of the rest of the movie on crutches, and it is never addressed again. Okay. Those actions don't make him very sympathetic, and they don't jibe well with his passion for Dori.

While the movie professes that schizophrenia is horrible and that Dori is "not well" as Sue sagely notes, that's not what the viewer is treated to. What the viewer gets to see is Dori, beautiful and languid, with quirky, odd, charming behavior that makes her like a sprite or nymph or otherworldly creature; that is to say, her schizophrenia gives her odd behavior, but not odd-scary or odd-out-of-control, instead it's odd-"oh my God, what a charming, beguiling girl." You can really see this at work in Mark. All he seems to know about schizophrenia is that it makes his girlfriend spacey, refreshingly innocent and child-like, otherworldy, and irrepressibly charming. Very seldom in the movie do the actual, devastatingly realistic effects of this horrible disease rear its ugly head. That to me is problematic.

Lastly, the end of the movie is brought about rather abruptly. It feels somewhat contrived.

Don't get me wrong - this movie isn't awful. There's a really good movie in here somewhere. The cast gives fine performances for what they're given to work with. But it just doesn't flow very well and a lot of it seems either pretty typical or actually nonsensical.

If you like the cast members, watch it for that. I don't know whether I can recommend it or not, I think certain people will like it, but I think it doesn't appeal to the majority of movie watchers.

This movie has some strange twists to it. I think the story could have been a little better with some rewrites. Rachel is HOT!!!!

Very few can know the lifestyle options available to Reverge Anselmo. ONLY he can capture it cinematically to let us in on it. Thank You, Reverge, for the depth of character to live through the challenges dealt you, and thank you for the artistic talent to share these experiences with us. God Bless you on your way!

I'd never heard of this when I got it out of the library. Very surprisingly well done love story about a mentally ill teen actress and her juvenile delinquent/soldier boyfriend with a sensitive side. Good script and nuanced acting make this one a cut above.

This film is based on a true story (of the writer/director's own life as a teen) and it revolves around the unlikely romance between a schizophrenic starlet & a young, silver spoon marine--who must serve his country or serve prison time--and how his life is changed by their romance & his military service. The film offers some very tender, touching, & heartwrenching moments and the romance is great & really believable. The stars have great romantic chemistry & the relationship is very realistic and reaffirming. They are a couple you find yourself rooting for & believing in.