Wolff rating: NOT BAD
Plot summary: Four gen-Xers bounce through life mostly unemployed struggling to find direction after they graduate from college.
Biased, pithy comments: The standard complaint about this movie is that Hollywood coldly and calculatedly made a movie designed to appeal directly to the slack generation. Perhaps they did; that wasn't actually what bugged me. Though Ryder, Hawke, and director Stiller make for a fast-talking somewhat-literate love triangle, the monkey on my back was that the plot, the story itself, is harmless and vapid; standard paperback romance about a woman caught between two men. None of the characters really transcend their stereotypes (outside of a clever performance by Garofalo and good support work from Steve Zahn), and thus at the empty ``we found love'' conclusion, none of these people's real problems (lack of direction, rotten opportunities for advancement grudgingly given by their elders, massive emotional immaturity, and some level of innumeracy) were solved. However, good one-liners and solid acting.
Other Notes: Waitress is the screenwriter, and Jeanne Tripplehorn is the uncredited fashion host. Psychic phone friend is related to director, I believe.
How many times I have seen it: x1
Starring: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garafalo, Steve Zahn, Ben Stiller.
Directed by: Ben Stiller