Reality Bites (1994)

(On TV, June 2020) It may seem strange for me to say that Reality Bites feels dated or that I found the characters insufferable considering that the film is supposed to capture the zeitgeist of my near-generation. But here’s the thing: I’m about five years younger than the characters here, and those five years, back in the mid-1990s, were significant enough. Then there is the fact that I wasn’t much into the whole Gen X slacker lifestyle, and that should explain the rest. (Once more for those in the back: Despite facile memes, you are not your generation.) (Although, hey, if we’re going to get into generational gabbing, let us point out that the reality-TV personal video recordings of 1994 are suspiciously a whole lot like post-2000s influencing—just sayin’.) Still, Reality Bites is certainly not completely unwatchable—in the hands of director Ben Stiller, there are many early appearances from known actors here, and bits of nice Houston scenery. The melodrama gets ridiculously overblown, but I suppose that no twentysomething romance would be complete without it. John Mahoney is surprisingly memorable in a handful of scenes, but the spotlight goes to a generation of actors who would all go on to bigger and better things: Let us mention Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn, and others, sometimes in one-scene cameos. I suppose Reality Bites is all right after all—but since the character with which I most identify is the designated yuppie villain, well, um.