This is another in the Criterion Challenge, this time under the category “Dark Comedies.” In short, it was dark, but less comedic.
I suspect this was made for me and my generation. I didn’t care or it, or even get it, really. I have a major gap in my movie watching that’s about ten years long, from 1995-2005. I had little kids at that time, so many of the movies that helped shape the young adults of my I missed. This, and probably a lot of the things that inspired it, were movies that never really made it into my life. They weren’t the easy to spot ones at the video store, and I didn’t have time for that.
This thing is filled with irony and sarcasm that’s so thick as to be lost. It loses the funny and moves into weird or mean or just plain out of place for me. I read that Rose McGowan was the real star due to her bad mouth and attitude. I felt like it was overplayed. She didn’t need to be that mean and sarcastic, but it’s what the movie chose to run with. It missed me completely.
The threesome angle felt like an ironic dig at the actual movie Threesome, but who knows. I can’t actually remember whether that was a major contemporary topic then (see above), but I do remember the movie, which was bad, and this felt like making fun of that stupid premise. Then there was the dude who seems like he was told to act like Keanu Reeves but a little more stoned. I didn’t care for it.
Overall, I just didn’t think it was good. The humor missed me, the characters were not engaging to me. I suppose I’m less disaffected than I was then, but I likely was never disaffected enough to get or enjoy this movie.