Empire Records!!!

Aha, not to mention the main storyline is commercial records vs their record shop =P

But really, Mallrats came out the same year =/
And the only comparison I see to Dazed and Confused is the age and one of the actors..

 

You appear to be a little slow, so I'm not so sure you'll understand my response, but here goes:

Just because a movie is set in a mall, it does not necessarily mean that it was made specifically to get a certain demographic to shell out money to see it. This is what is meant by 'commercial'-- Mallrats is at least a genuine attempt at making a decent film, Empire Records is an attempt at making money based on a target market that films like Clerks and Slacker had already created.

Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater, even though they're not exactly great artists, at least have their own niche and an ear for dialogue. Smith made Clerks, so he gets to own the whole stoner sex comedy thing. Linklater made Dazed and Confused, so he gets to own the whole 70s-cool American Graffiti on weed with lots of music thing.

Empire Records is formulaic in the worst possible way-- it latched onto a current trend, took your standard B-movie 'save our store/camp/restaurant/ alien from being taken over by the rich people/government' plot, hired some hip young 'now' actors (or just pretty ones), and got them to namedrop a bunch of bands with good reputations without ever really saying, doing or being anything original or interesting.

It is the worst, most wretched most insulting piece of crap film to address the topic of good-looking teens pretending to be vulnerable, or suicidal, or stoned, etc.

Admit it-- the only thing anyone really likes about this movie is the hair, the clothes, the fact that someone in it smokes pot (the writers of that scene have obviously never smoked pot), and the fact that they mention the Pixies.

 

On top of that they managed to blow their load with every teen movie cliche in the first half hour. The owner tell the kid "Don't drink my beer, don't smoke my cigars, and don't play my drums." and that's the first thing the kid does have none of you people seen Risky Buisness. Then Liv Tyler coming into the store "Yay I just got into Harvard." I've seen that in a million movies. And she's planning to lose her virginity to the rockstar dude comes on way too strong and embarasses herself as her slut best friend bangs the shit out of the douchebag in the office.

This isn't like Animal House which is cliche now but pretty much started the cliches. This just sucked up all the cliches pieced them together in a way that barely makes sense and put the Gin Blossoms on the soundtrack in hopes you don't notice all of the cliches running by about every 3 minutes.

Peace OUt,
Rev J

 

LOL it's weird before I read your last post, I forgot Gin Blossoms were on the soundtrack, and I was going to talk about them a little bit.

I find the movie to be a bit of a guilty pleasure. Nothing I would go out of my way to see again and I certainly would not own it, but if it's on at someone's house or like a sunday day when nothing is on tv ill watch it. They aren't the same but I find High Fidelity a lot better than this movie. This movie reminds me of Gin Blossoms, Spacehog, Blind Melon and all that guilty pleasure 90's stuff.

 

Yeah, I do agree with the movie being full of cliches, but for some reason I am intrigued by it, I can't decide if it was for Robin Tunney not giving a shit, the Gwar dream sequence, or the fact its about a record/cd store to what drew me in.

 

Because they are well packaged, with likable characters, good dialogue, solid directing and acting, and great music.

You don't have to be completely original to be good. Hell, many of my favorite movies are adaptations of novels or plays.