Product Details

• Actors: Selma Blair
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• VHS Release Date: January 14, 2003
• Run Time: 87 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005JKJF
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,311 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Todd Solondz, director of the acclaimed Welcome to the Dollhouse and the controversial Happiness, continues pushing the envelope of social decorum with the merciless and casually cruel Storytelling, his most ruthless satire of suburban complacency. Broken into two unrelated chapters, "Fiction" follows college girl Selma Blair through a degrading encounter with her resentful writing teacher (Robert Wisdom), while the more sprawling and scattershot "Non-Fiction" circles around the mutual exploitation of a fumbling documentary filmmaker (Paul Giamatti doing a near-parody of director Solondz) and his clueless subject, a suburban high school slacker named Scooby (Mark Webber). The squirmy laughs are laced with humiliation and the satire is acidic and cynical; in the world of Solondz, victims and victimizers alike are petty, selfish, vindictive, and thoughtless, and empathy is strictly rationed. Though sharply written and well directed, this misanthropic vision is strictly for daring filmgoers and Solondz fans. --Sean Axmaker

From The New Yorker
Another disturbance of the peace from the writer-director Todd Solondz, who made "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Happiness." This time, we get a movie split in half, the first part of which concerns a creative-writing student (Selma Blair), thin and white, who dumps her disabled boyfriend and, for good measure, sleeps with her black professor. In the second half, we trace the exploits of a documentary filmmaker (Paul Giamatti) who wants to unearth what the youth of today are doing with themselves in high school. The answer is, more or less, nothing, although we do come across one slacker who would like to be on TV. In short, Solondz presents two tales meant to winkle out the cultural encounters that embarrass us the most, and then twists the knife and leaves us squirming harder than before. It's clever enough, and you could gash yourself on some of the lines, but, when a director is as resolutely ungenerous as Solondz, the end can only come as a relief. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Mandingo" and "Reality TV", February 26, 2003

By	Marty From SF (San Francisco, CA.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Storytelling (DVD)

Although this third film by Todd Solondz is not as good as "Welcome To The Dollhouse" or "Happiness", it still smacks of satirical cynicism. Inexplicably split into two films ('Fiction', 'Non-fiction'), we are first presented with a twenty minute film about community college level 'writing', in which, a young woman has a confrontational and sexual sparring with the black, 'mandingo' teacher. It's all meant to be a comment on hypocritical racists in education. It culminates in an outrageous sex encounter that is literally 'blocked' by a large red rectangle (taboo emphasis). It's moderately entertaining.

The second part of the film is more complex. Without exposing too much of the plot, it involves (as "Happiness" did) classism, racism, sexism, oh hell, any 'ism' you could imagine. But it works. It is simply a story of an upper middle class American family with the 2.5 kids and the proper suburban parents with a perfect son, the 'imperfect' son and the 'baby'. Kudos to John Goodman and Julie Haggerdy for participating in this movie. They bring life and legitimacy to their roles. Solondz filmed this well before "reality TV" was popular, and that is the premise. While the imperfect son is being secretly filmed for a documentary, the family struggles through it's own unusually tragic existence (the youngest of the three sons is the 'Brady Bunch brat' we always thought we wanted to see as evil). Needless to say, Solondz produces many shocks and surprises along the way. The trip is wildly entertaining, but the finale may leave the viewer distraught. Not that the story is poorly conceived or arranged, but simply that the ending is horribly, terribly depressing. It still good enough to recommend. I consider that a rare accomplishment for any film-maker.

26 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solondz grinds in the bitterness, February 6, 2002

By	LGwriter "SharpWitGuy" (Astoria, N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

While Todd Solondz' previous film, Happiness, was an acidic--and mordantly funny--attack on suburban life, Storytelling goes one "better" (if one can say that) and pushes the director's penchant for vitriol to the max.

The two unequal components of the film, Fiction and Non-Fiction, are meant to be complementary, but do not function as such. The first, Fiction, is mercifully short, juxtaposing the intense contempt of a black prize-winning writer, relegated to the role of a fiction writing prof in a two-bit college, with his snide, spoiled, white, know-it-all students, almost all girls. He unequivocally blasts their work. In a powerful revelatory scene, the black man vents his tremendous frustration on one of the white girls whose attempt to forge a relationship with a boy in the class, stricken with cerebral palsy, fails because of his own fears of inadequacy. Her sexual frustration absolutely must have an outlet, and so she turns to the only other available male she knows.

The phrase "mercifully short" is used because the characterizations here are flat and one-dimensional. In retrospect, Solondz may have done this intentionally to illustrate his own tremendous disgust at the rage inherent in societal conventions that destroy what should be (or at least is meant by) civilized behavior: racism and 'sub-human' categorization of those with physical afflictions. The bitterness is so deep in this short piece, it leaves a really strong taste; you can feel this down in your gut. Not only is it not pleasant; it's not that entertaining. He makes his point by smashing, not hitting, the viewer over the head.

The second piece, Non-Fiction, is much more fully realized, and chronicles the simultaneous activity of a schleppy documentary film-maker (Paul Giamatti in one of his best roles, bar none) with a bizarre dysfunctional family, played convincingly by John Goodman and Julie Hagerty as the parents, Lupe Ontiveros as the beleagured domestic, and some talented newcomers in the roles of the sons. Here Solondz does a masterful job of combining hypnosis, a sports-related disastrous injury, and death by gas with a jaundiced view of what "entertainment" in America really means. A closet gay teenager who aspires to be the next Conan O'Brien is picked by the hapless filmmaker as his subject--clearly a choice driven by desperation--and an outrageous twist of fate ultimately leaves the filmmaker at loose ends and the teenager even more rootless than he is normally.

This piece is without question one of Solondz' best works and, at the same time, is a denunciation of typical American suburban life even more bitter (if that's possible) than that depicted in Happiness. It would have been truly great to see this expanded to feature length. Rumor has it that Solondz actually shot three segments for the film. The third was not used; perhaps it will turn up in a future work, or in the inevitable DVD release.

Overall this is a curious two-part film which is saved by its second story. No film maker in the United States working today has as much hatred for American mores as Solondz, but, as shown in Happiness and the Non-Fiction part of Storytelling, his intensely black humor/ferocious irony makes his work compelling.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A movie that never flinches, June 16, 2002

By	"home_theatre_guru" (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Storytelling (DVD)

Todd Solondz's funny and controversial films examine sordid suburbia. They are witty, satirical stories but also unflinching in their use of controversial subjects like rape, pedophilia and other "uncomfortable" subjects that most mainstream films would never have the nerve to address, much less use in a comedic context. So, you either love his films or hate them (as the other reviews here will attest.) I happen to love his films.

It might be best to watch his previous film, "Happiness", before watching "Storytelling" as "Storytelling" seems (to me) to be the film maker's personal response to the criticisms that his other films have elicited. "Storytelling" is composed of two, separate stories titled "Fiction" and "Non Fiction". "Non Fiction" features a documentary film maker (clearly representing Solondz)who's a downtrodden geek, accused of exploiting his subjects.

His films make you laugh but also uncomfortable about laughing. I think he's an exciting voice in American cinema, far removed from the formulated drek that's cranked out by the studios. Highly recommended!