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Recently, my brother told me that he and my nephew had watched the first John McClane action shoot-’em-up Die Hard together. I was shocked for a moment, until I realized that my nephew is actually 16 years old now, and I probably first saw Die Hard when I was twelve. And look how I turned out!

Anyway, my brother and I then discussed the movie for the first time in awhile. I honestly feel that he has embraced this fatherhood thing on a new level now that his kids are old enough to watch movies that he loved when he was younger, and now he gets to look at them through fresh eyes. As we discussed the movie, I sort of did this vicariously, as well.

I won’t get into the whole plot of the film, but in case you’ve forgotten, it should suffice to say that some call it the greatest Christmas movie of all time, while my Dad once referred to it as “The Guy in the Tower with the Bloody Feet.” Yes, the bloody feet is the lasting image for most viewers, but as my brother and I dissected it, I realized there’s a lot more to this one than one cop killing a bunch of bad guys.

The thing that separates Die Hard from all the knock-offs that came after it (including the actual Die Hard sequels that followed) was the personal touches to the characters, especially the bad guys. Hans Gruber, of course, played by the amazing Alan Rickman, in his big-screen debut, if you can believe it, unfortunately inspired a generation of less-amazing actors playing less-amazing villains, but Hans was superior because he actually felt like a real person, not your token raving lunatic. You get the feeling that Hans didn’t even really want to kill people. They were just standing in the way of his $640 million. Hans also is sympathetic to the pregnant woman that he has taken hostage, and agrees with Mrs. McClane that the hostages have to use the bathroom. No Bond villain has ever been that nice.

Hans’ right hand man, Karl, played by the late Alexander Gudunov (Boy, these Die Hard terrorists are dropping like flies!), also had real motivation after his brother became John McClane’s first kill of the movie. And it can almost be said that McClane didn’t really *mean* to kill him. I mean, it happened, and McClane certainly didn’t feel bad, but they were struggling and fell down the stairs and the guy broke his neck. Sorry, Karl. Can’t make an omelet…

There’s countless other little touches that make the terrorists into real people, from the one who steals the candy bars as he’s waiting to shoot the SWAT team, (Side Note: I just remembered another interesting moment from that scene: when Hans tells his men to “Just wound them.” He says it in that cold, Alan Rickman-way, but you get the sense that he kind of realizes these poor schmoes are sitting ducks, so let’s not actually kill them. They’re just working-class slobs, after all.), to the computer guy who actually scratches his nose after he kicks a guard’s dead body over. I mean, it has nothing to do with the plot, but terrorists are people, too, and people scratch their noses. I don’t recall any nostril penetration, but who knows? And if you want to get all psychiatrist on me, you could make the argument that it’s more twisted to scratch your nose after you help kill a guy, or that it’s more painful for Hans to “just wound” the SWAT team rather than just blow them away, but the point is, no other movie villains bother with these subtleties.

Even with all these small personal touches for the bad guys, no one in the movie represents the regular Joe more than the hero, John McClane. McClane is a cop from New York who is visiting his estranged wife in L.A., and just happened to be at the Christmas party when Hans and his boys showed up. As the only person who managed to get away, and because he still has a thing for his wife, it falls on him to stop them. Or at least not get killed. He obviously has no plan at all, which is what makes him such a great hero, and this such a great movie. Unlike Rambo or Chuck Norris or whoever, John has no real fighting skills, no special training that makes him better than his rivals, other than “cop.” He’s not really even in great shape. I mean, he looks great for an average Joe, but he’s not Schwarzeneggar or anything. All he has is a gun and his wits, and an attitude that allows him to push the envelope. Even as he encounters his first terrorist, Karl’s brother, and the terrorist says that he won’t shoot him because policemen have rules, John quips, “Yeah, that’s what my Captain keeps telling me.” So, we get the sense that even though he’s a regular guy, he’s not a regular cop. Or even a very good one.

Still, there are elements of him that are not like his action-hero contemporaries. When he is on the top of the building, which he knows is set to explode, the only way he even has a chance of surviving is to jump. So, as he ties a firehose around his waist, the only pep talk he can think to give himself is, “John, what the fuck are you doing?” He then tells God that if he lets him live, he will never think of going up in a tall building again. I don’t recall Arnold ever uttering a prayer like that. In fact, Arnold probably would jump without the firehose.

Arnold also never had to deal with bloody feet. The story with that is that McClane’s neighbor on the flight to L.A. was a seasoned traveler who told him that the secret to surviving air travel is to take off your shoes and socks and make “fists with your toes.” It just happens that the terrorists attack just as John is practicing his toe-fisting, thus he spends the entire movie running around a building fighting terrorists barefoot. Now, come on, what action hero outside of Bruce Lee spends the whole movie fighting without shoes? Not only does John McClane do it, but he pulls it off without looking silly. It becomes a  bit of an issue when Hans orders his cronies to shoot out a bunch of office windows, but otherwise,… masterful.

I remember taking a screenwriting class years ago that covered Chinatown, and how the studio was opposed to having the hero of the movie spend half of it with a bandage on his nose, but that’s what people remember about the character. It doesn’t take away from the character at all, but rather adds to it. The no-shoes aspect adds to John McClane’s struggle and makes you feel for him more, especially after the whole glass thing. I don’t even think any of the more established (at the time) action heroes could have pulled it off without looking a tad ridiculous. Bear in mind, Bruce Willis was basically known as a comedic actor (the funny guy from Moonlighting) at this point. In fact, even with all my talk about how great a job Willis does at playing the “everyman,” the role was supposedly offered to many in the action hero community, like Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, Charles Bronson, Nick Nolte, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Don Johnson, Burt Reynolds, and Richard Dean Anderson, and thank frikkin’ God they all turned it down. Can you imagine McGyver running around a tower with bloody feet? The movie would have bombed bigger than Nakatomi Plaza!

The climax sees McClane at his odds-beating best (three terrorists, two bullets, what’s a guy to do?) McClane is able to K.O. one with the butt of his gun, leaving just two. However, Hans has discovered that he has his tormentor’s wife in the throng, and is holding her at gunpoint. McClane, recalling their earlier exchange about American westerns, tapes his gun to his back and, for all intents and purposes, surrenders, lacing his hands behind his head like a classic action hero, stating, “Ya got me.” He and Hans share a laugh as the German butchers the famous “Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker,” line, and when Hans has dropped his guard, McClane pulls out the gun and blows the final two terrorists away with his last two bullets. Hans does manage to hang on to McClane’s wife for a brief moment as he falls out the window, but John is able to rescue her, by unsnapping her Rolex (mentioned earlier in the movie as a gift for all her hard work. Nothing is by accident…). Hans’ slo-mo demise is one of the few action movie cliche’s in the whole film, but it was the late-80’s so we’ll let it slide.

Like I said in the beginning, Die Hard more than holds up, and is separated from the pack of bad action movies that came, and is still coming, after, because it is written to be believable. Most Rambo movies are basically the same as this, where it’s one guy versus a billion and he just shoots them all. But this one is structured so well that you can believe that this one guy took out all these bad dudes, and did it with gumption and wits. It’s another thing I learned in screenwriting classes; if you’re going to write a movie that involves a time-traveling car, you have to write it so that the audience believes it can happen. If you’re going to write a movie where one cop with no shoes is going to take out twelve money-grubbing terrorists, you have to write it to make us believe it can happen. Not that we know it will, but that we believe it will.

While you’re at it, believe in Santa Claus! Happy Holidays, everyone!

It’s always interesting to me how people can relate to certain movies and characters based on where they are in their lives while seeing the movie for the first time. For instance, Magic Mike always harkens me back to my days as a male stripper. This is probably why some movies don’t settle well, because they are meant to appeal to a certain audience at a certain time, but when that audience moves out of that time, the movie just doesn’t hold up.

But some movies do stand the test of time, because they appeal to a wider audience. I’ve written before about how 40-year-old Matt Dursin relates to different characters, even in the same movie, than did 25-year-old Matt Dursin. I’m starting to sound like a big Scotch-drinker, but it’s true. (2017 note: I, in fact, am a big Scotch-drinker)

However, I have a little trouble placing Good Will Hunting. On the one hand, it’s a really ridiculous premise: a genius kid from Southie works as a janitor at M.I.T. and solves equations at night when no one is around. OK, I can swallow that enough. Unfortunately, genius kid meets a girl, and decides to throw away the prosperous future that is being laid out for him, and leave all his buddies in Boston, and drive his beater across the country to chase her, after knowing her for just a few weeks. Also, he lied his face off to her and treated her rather poorly, so why she would even have him once he got there is beyond me. That’s where 40-year-old Matt Dursin has a problem with it.

But, it was 22-year-old Matt Dursin who saw the movie for the first time, and he saw it while living in L.A. Yes, the most Boston movie ever made up to that point, and I was 3,000 miles away when I first saw it, so sue me for being nostalgic. I was spending my final semester out there, and it was very much up-in-the-air on whether or not I would even return to the East coast after graduation. I’m not going to go so far as to say that Good Will Hunting had any impact on my decision, but I will say that, like Good Will, I came back because I had to “go see about a girl.” The thing is that girl and I broke up four months later, which is probably what happened to Will and Minnie Driver, and probably what would happen to most people in this situation. Let’s face it, at 22, you’ve still got a whole lot of livin’ to do.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts about it settling, here’s the skinny on Good Will Hunting: Like I recounted above, Will is a super-intelligent janitor at M.I.T who finishes equations at night for fun. He catches the attention of Field’s Medal-Winner Professor Gerald Lambeau (otherwise known as Creepy Stellan Skarsgaard), who sees world-changing potential in him. The tiny hiccup in Lambeau’s plan is that Will is a bit of a loser. He hangs out with a bunch of other losers, including Chuckie, played by pre-sexual harassment Ben & Casey Affleck. During one of their pointless skirmishes with other Southie ne’er-do-wells, Will punches a cop in the face, and so is in some hot water with the fuzz. Lambeau gets the judge to go easy on him and turn him over to the professor, and in return, Will must go to counseling. I didn’t think college mathematics professors had that kind of sway in our judicial system, but there you go.

Enter: Robin Williams. After Will out-smarts several eminent psychiatrists by insulting their masculinity, Lambeau turns to his former roommate, Sean Maguire (another Southie boy), played by Robin Williams in an Oscar-winning role. Sean is supposed to give Will direction, preferably the direction that Lambeau wants. Will sandbags Maguire at first, as he did with all the other shrinks, but eventually they bond over Game 6 of the 1975 World Series and the fact that their father-figures weren’t very nice to them. Man, Southie sure was different then.

They also talk a lot about Will’s new lady-friend, Skylar, played by Minnie Driver. Skylar is a Harvard med student who is soon graduating and moving to San Fran to continue her education, so Will sees little point in pursuing anything serious. Widower Robin Williams tries to convince him that he should give love a chance, but really, I think I gotta side with Will on this one. Eventually, good ol’ Chuckie finally rips Will a new one about how he has a winning lottery ticket for a brain, and he needs to use it and blow this burg. (2017 Note: It’s funny that, on the 20 year anniversary, people are talking about what a Boston movie this was, when the ultimate resolution is Will deciding that he needs to get the Hell out. Very Springsteen.)

Like I said, the end result is that Will takes off for San Francisco to follow Skylar, leaving Sean, Chuckie, Lambeau and everyone who helped him and was willing to help him behind. We don’t really know if he got an amazing job out there, but maybe he moved to Silicon Valley and became CEO of some awesome internet start-up. Or he kept mopping floors. Who knows?

I think we’re supposed to believe that he left it all behind for a girl, which I was all for when I saw it at 22. I vividly remember a conversation I had with one of my fellow students out in L.A. when I was discussing my “Will-I-or-Won’t-I” plight. he said, “What good is the greatest job in the world if you’ve got no one to share it with?” At the time I thought that was just wonderful, so I thought, “You go, Will!” I also didn’t know as much about Hollywood endings. Did I mention Good Will Hunting won Best Screenplay that year?

Here’s the real clinker, though; Older and wiser (and grumpier) me thinks about this movie now and marvels at the scenes between Sean and Lambeau. Despite the fact that they paint Lambeau as a total jerk most of the time, he makes some good points. He has seen firsthand Will embarrass brilliant mathematicians, and knows what Will can offer the world. In comparing Will to Albert Einstein, he says, “Imagine if Einstein had given all that up to get drunk with his buddies?”  If you want to say that Lambeau is the villain in this movie, then there is the motivation that makes him an interesting and believable character. Certainly much more interesting than Skylar.

However, Sean Maguire, the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Will’s Luke, makes a similar comparison to another brilliant mathematician: The Una-Bomber. Sean’s point is that if they rush things and don’t let Will grow on his own and face his past, then he could become a looney who blows people up. It seems a little overly dramatic, but it could have been a cool plotline if they didn’t spend so much time on the dopey love story.

The other cool part about the scenes between Sean and Lambeau is the history they have. At one time, they were contemporaries, but Sean ended up counseling veterans and teaching at Bunker Hill Community College after, presumably, meeting his wife. The unattached Lambeau became a sort of rock star mathematician, if that’s even possible, winning what is described as the Nobel Prize for mathematics. So, they took different paths, and Lambeau thinks that Sean is trying to use Will to get back at him for being successful, and Sean thinks that Lambeau is using Will to belittle him for not being successful. In the climactic scene that probably was on the Oscar nomination tape, Sean tells Lambeau that he knows who he is, and is proud of what he does, and in my favorite line, puts him in his place when he says, “I knew you before your were Mathematical God, when you were pimple-faced and homesick and didn’t know what side of the bed to piss on.”

Naturally, 22-year-old Matt Dursin could not possibly understand that kind of dynamic, but 40-year-old one does all too well, as I’m sure a lot of people do, in their own way. However, like Sean, I am damn happy with the choices I have made. Living in L.A. and working in the office at a movie studio probably wouldn’t have worked out too well, but then, I didn’t exactly have it all laid out for me like Will did.  No regrets there. But I do sometimes wonder what became of my L.A. friend who fed me that brilliant “No one to share it with” line. Was he the Gerald Lambeau to my Sean Maguire? I will probably never know, because I actually don’t even remember his name.

Seeing that this was the Little Movie That Could, and pretty much launched the careers of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, it is interesting to peel back the layers a little bit. However, in the end, it boils down to a cheesy love story. But there was another moment that probably helped Williams win that Oscar, and that’s not part of the overall love story, but it is a love story: the love between Bostonians and their beloved Red Sox.

As I mentioned earlier, Sean and Will bond over Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, a game etched in Boston sports lore, and sometimes called the greatest game of the greatest World Series ever played. That game climaxed when Carlton Fisk hit the game-winning home run off the foul pole in Fenway Park, wildly waving his hands as he left the batter’s box, willing the ball fair.

You can’t write that stuff.

It’s hard to imagine it now, but in Boston before 2004, that was all the Red Sox really had as far as post-season history. And for it to be woven into the screenplay of a movie was pretty cool. Williams was recounting the story of the night to Will, saying that he and his friends had slept on the street to get tickets, but when Will asked him if he rushed the field, as the fans did in 1975, Sean said that he didn’t go to the game, because he saw a girl in the bar before and decided he had to “go see about a girl,” his future wife as it turned out. Will is understandably incredulous, but Sean tells him that he doesn’t regret anything, not the years spent counseling veterans, teaching at a community college, caring for his ailing wife, and he certainly doesn’t regret missing a baseball game. And he probably doesn’t regret not winning a Fields Medal.

That’s the real love story at work here; loving who you are. That’s why this movie, despite its flaws, does settle well, when you stop and think. It’s really about not living with regret and being happy with who you have become. No 22-year-old can understand that, yet.

Well, everyone is weighing in on this one, so I figured I would, too, but no matter what any critic, blogger, pundit or neophyte out there on the internets says, the only opinion that really matters has spoken, to the tune of the largest March opening weekend ever, and the sixth biggest U.S. opening ever. I don’t really understand it, but about $20 of that were mine, so I guess I’m just as crazy as the rest of the country.

The opinions of this *ahem* film seem to range from “absolutely terrible” to “wasn’t that bad.” That’s certainly not a wide range, and I don’t think I’ve heard too many people say it was actually good, but that’s what’s kind of interesting to me. Despite the fact that people either think it’s one of the worst movies ever made, as I do, or they think it is just “not bad,” it seems to be a very polarizing piece of pop culture, especially in the comic book fandom. There is definitely a fair amount of comic-movie backlash floating around these days, but some of us who are devoted fans of the genre will defend it to the death, especially to those non-fans. It’s like Mel Brooks making fun of Jews; he can do it and it’s not offensive because he’s Jewish. You can’t make fun of my comic book movies because you’re not a fan and you don’t know my pain! I’ve waited my whole life for this!

Still, even though I am a comic book reader, that doesn’t mean I go all in. I mean, I also like baseball, but I don’t love every team. And when you really think about it, there hasn’t been a decent Superman movie since 1980. That’s five really bad movies in a row over 36 years. How many does it take before someone says, “You know what? I don’t think Supes works.” Apparently never, because we’re stuck with a few more of these Zack Snyder crap-fests over the next five years.

That aspect may be more remarkable than the public opinion of this movie; the fact that Warner Brothers felt so far behind Disney when it came to comic book movies that they jump-started their whole slate of tentpoles for the next five years with this one, never once thinking, “What if nobody likes it?” Next summer, we have Wonder Woman, followed by Justice League: Part One in November, then The Flash in Spring 2018 and the long-awaited Aquaman solo film for your summer popcorn flick in 2018. If that doesn’t make you want to toss your lunch, 2019 brings us Shazam!(?????) and Justice League: Part Two. Wow! And if I’m not in prison for murdering Zack Snyder by 2020, we’ll have a Cyborg solo venture, and a Green Lantern Corps movie. That’s eight movies, plus whatever Ben Affleck solo Batman films they churn out. And we are not off to a good start.

(PLEASE NOTE: I intentionally left out Suicide Squad, because I don’t really think they will have much interaction with the other DC heroes. Plus, that trailer doesn’t look that bad.)

Now, I know the counter-argument is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which was a movie with characters nobody had ever heard of that was way better than anyone expected. And yes, it could happen. Shazam! could be a Tour de Force of cinematic wonder. I’m just not holding my breath. And I know it’s hard for some, because most of my friends don’t know which company puts out which movies, but let’s not even compare the DC films to the Marvel ones, because they are using completely different pizza recipes, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like comparing all other animation companies to Pixar.

The funny thing is none of this actually matters a whole lot because Batman vs. Superman is being judged in the court of public opinion, which, thanks  to social media and people (myself included) wanting to get their two cents in, is not a vacuum. Last week, when the first reviews were coming out, the majority of them were negative. Then when the general public started seeing it, we saw more backlash. Rotten Tomatoes at this moment has it at a pretty abysmal 29%. By way of comparison, the universally-panned Phantom Menace is still pretty low on the Tomatometer, and that is at 56%. Still, way better than BvS.

But then came the apologists. The people who just need a couple hours of entertainment. The people who just wanted to see some explosions and some pretty people duke it out. The people who really, really wanted to like it, so they willed it into the Not Bad category. And that’s totally fine. I sometimes wish I could be one of those people. But I went to film school and have a pretty analytical mind, anyway, and so I am cursed with having to wonder what went wrong. I mean, hundreds of people are involved in making every blockbuster. I can’t believe someone involved didn’t have the kahones to walk up to Zack Snyder and say, “This is drivel.” Or maybe they did, and he took the Billy Mack route. I mean, it made $170 million on opening weekend. I’d call that sold gold shit, all right.

But what I really want to study is this cultural phenomenon of a lot of people really hating a movie, and then suddenly a bunch of people coming out and saying it’s “not that bad.” I don’t know if it’s an underdog thing, but I’ve heard people stick up for this movie like it was a person. We’re talking about a major studio blockbuster release here, which probably cost about as much as it takes to launch a space shuttle, not some indy director trying to make it in this cutthroat business. And what does “not that bad” even mean?  To me, “not that bad” is kind of just a euphemism for “not that good.”

To be fair, some people seemed to have kinda-sorta actually liked it. One common (semi-)positive review is that it’s better than its predecessor Man of Steel, which is kind of like saying that one carton of sour milk tastes slightly less sour than another. However, that same reviewer goes on to say that ” ‘Batman v Superman’ is neither as stupid nor as stupendous as it might have been.” So, it’s not as stupid as it might have been? Seems like this guy still thinks it’s kind of stupid. But somewhere between stupid and stupendous then? Gotcha. Sounds like another way to say “not that bad.”

Andrew O’Hehir from Salon.com wrote: So Batman v Superman is kind of dopey and plays out some laborious plot twists in the DC narrative at unnecessary length, but as I’ve already said it largely kept me entertained for two and a half hours, which is not nothing.” No, but is it something? He also says that “This movie isn’t nearly as terrible as I was expecting.” These seem like apologist reviews to me.

Even Comic Book Resources, which should be this film’s bread-and-butter, could not sugarcoat this movie. That’s right. Even a comic book fan called this movie “a trainwreck.” And it is. Jesse Eisenberg plays the worst criminal mastermind in film history. Superman isn’t the Man of Steel here, because he’s actually wooden. Wonder Woman is fine, for the entire seven minutes she’s onscreen. The Aquaman cameo is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen in any movie. And the long-anticipated battle of the century (y’know, Batman vs. Superman) takes so long to develop that they only have a few minutes to actually fight, since they didn’t really start until the thing was already around the two-hour mark. Plus, the trailer pretty much gave away that they would be buddies by the end, anyway.

But that’s just one side of the coin. Of course, every movie has its supporters and detractors, but this one seems different somehow. Some movies are needlessly long and drawn-out. Some movies are poorly acted or poorly written. Some movies are weighed down by too much plot and not enough action. Some movies just insult my intelligence. This movie does all of these things, and yet, some people liked it. Or at least, it wasn’t as terrible as they thought it would be. Why? I’m not sure. Maybe they like going against the grain. Maybe they don’t care so much. Maybe it appealed to them in some other way (and I don’t fault them for that. In fact, I’m sort of jealous.)

Or maybe they felt bad for poor, old Ben:

I could watch that all day.

It’s possible I may be picking on someone’s favorite movie with this one. Or maybe not. I really don’t have a very good gauge for contemporary pop culture. That’s why I write about movies from many years ago and whether they’re still good or not. It’s sort of my thing. Although I’m definitely not alone, because I did find this article during my research.

The other reason I write about these movies is because my opinion on them has usually changed greatly over time. This change may be due to circumstances in my own life, or the changes may be more societal, but something has brought it on. Obviously, since the movies haven’t changed much, unless it’s Star Wars and George Lucas has been dicking with it. But I am aware that some people’s opinions don’t waver like mine, because they probably saw a movie when it came out, liked it, and if they happen to see it again, they remember that experience and it brings a smile to their face, and it colors their opinion of that movie forever. Which is totally fine. I have had that moment many times in my life, and it’s great. However, I have too often had the opposite reaction, as well. I very often see a movie again and think, “Whoa. I used to like this movie. What happened?” Most of the time, though, it’s just a matter of perspective. As one gets older, things you used to think were important turn out to be kind of silly.

Recently, Garden State was on one of the many movie channels I get, and even though I only watched a few minutes of it, I cringed almost every second. At least every second when Natalie Portman was talking. Now, before anyone reading this (anyone?) chastises me because this is a wonderful romantic film made a by a young auteur and with an amazing soundtrack to boot, hear me out. I know it may not sound like it, but I am not saying this is necessarily a bad movie. This is simply a movie that I saw in 2004, when I was 28 and wide-eyed, and enjoyed a great deal. And saw again recently as a completely different man of 39 and realized that it was absolute hokum. Believe me, hokum has it’s place in the world. Just not quite this much.

So, let’s get to it: the film revolves around Zach Braf, probably playing some version of himself since he also wrote and directed it, returning to his childhood hometown to attend his mother’s funeral. Zach’s character, as Zach did himself, has gone to Hollywood to become an actor and left all the glory of whatever podunk town he grew up in behind. Well, sort of. As the movie progresses we discover that poor, famous, movie-star Zach is tortured because when he was a little kid, he pushed his mother over and she fell and hit her neck on the open dishwasher and she became paraplegic. His psychiatrist/dickhead father then sent him away to some boarding school for his trouble, and he was on horse-paralyzing amounts of medication for all of the ensuing years. According to the movie, he was always on them so he never really thought about getting off them, but, Jesus, you’d think at some point in the last decade the kid would nut-up and realize he didn’t need all those drugs. I’m sure some pot would have loosened him right up.

While home, he goes to a party at the home of his “unimpressive” friend, played by Stellan Skaarsgard (Whoops. I mean, Peter Sarsgaard), where he proceeds to get drunk, play Spin the Bottle(!), and wake up with the word BALLS written across his forehead. This prompts one of the only funny lines in a movie with thousands of supposedly funny lines, uttered matter-of-factly by Jim Parsons, a.k.a. the guy who now plays Sheldon the Butch on Big Bang Theory: “By the way, it says balls on your face.” I guess what the movie was trying to illustrate with this scene was that Zach (who plays a character with the rather on-the-nose name Andrew Largeman) has evolved past all these things, since he’s a big Hollywood actor now, but come on, he did get drunk and stoned and play Spin The Bottle and make out with Amy Furgeson (who does, like, real movies now), so he really doesn’t have a leg to stand on. But good on him. She was cute.

The pretension is totally unleashed when Andrew goes to a doctor to literally have his head examined and runs afoul of Natalie Portman’s Sam, who is at the doctor because she’s whacked. Okay, okay. It was for epilepsy. But she is whacked. They begin talking in the waiting room, and she introduces him to the Shins song that will “change his life,” which is a great song that was kind of ruined by this movie. Then he drives her home, and to his friend’s house, and then they bury her dead hamster together. You know, typical first date stuff. The whole time they are together, she keeps telling him that it’s not a date and there’s nothing happening here, but, come on. We all know they’re going to do it eventually. Thinking on it now, it might have made for a better movie if they were just buddies, and we didn’t have to put up with this ham-fisted love story and her stupid platitudes.

For anyone unfamiliar with the term “Manic-Pixie Dream Girl,” it was a phrase coined by Nathan Rabin to describe trope characters like Sam. I think he was originally referring to Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown when he came up with it, but since Garden State came out first, I’m going to say that Sam was the catalyst. Either way, it is defined as “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” It’s kind of sad when you realize that this is a thing, and it is a thing that brings this entire movie down, unfortunately.

I once wrote a really long rant called “Llyod Dobler is a Made-Up Person.” The crux of the rant being that Lloyd Dobbler, the romantic, boom box-wielding idiot who swept Ione Skye off her feet by playing “In Your Eyes” in Say Anything, ruined romance for a generation of girls who thought that all guys should be that dreamy, but in fact none of them are. He’s completely made-up, and completely ridiculous. This is also true of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. No one talks or acts like Sam in Garden State, and if such a person did exist, wouldn’t you just find her so annoying that you’d want to slap her?  I mean, this is just one of the annoying exchanges between the two lovebirds:

Andrew Largeman: Fuck, this hurts so much.

Sam: I know it hurts. That’s life. If nothing else, It’s life. It’s real, and sometimes it fuckin’ hurts, but it’s sort of all we have.

You know what else hurts? Movie dialogue that’s supposed to be deep and meaningful. But maybe I’m just being cynical. Obviously, some people like it:

(Hah! You two idiots got the same tattoo!)

I wish I could say that Sam says that line in a laid-back, “what-can-ya-do?” kind of way. But she doesn’t. She’s being completely serious. And that is the problem for the entire movie. It just takes itself so seriously and tries so hard to be poignant that it blasts right past “poignant” and goes straight to “dippy.” Take the scene where they are all swimming in the pool, except Andrew because he never learned how to swim at the school for mom-cripplers he was sent to, and he gets all philosophical on Sam, realizing that he was homesick for a place that doesn’t exist, and waxing, “Just because it’s a house doesn’t mean it’s a home.” Yeah, douchebag. You got sent away and wished you could go home, only to realize that home was not that cool. Ever hear that the grass is always greener? It’s called adulthood. I’d say jump in, but you can’t swim.

Despite all of this ridiculousness, Garden State has some high points. If I had the time, I would do my own “Phantom-Edit” and simply cut out Natalie Portman entirely, and have it be a cool buddy comedy about Peter Saarsgard (however it’s spelled!) taking Braf on an emotional (but weird) journey to get his mom’s jewelry back. Those, to me, are the best scenes of the whole movie. Like when they go to the hardware store to steal something only to return it for the cash, and encounter their deranged classmate who is embroiled in a pyramid scheme. Or at the hotel when they have to deal with the sex-crazed bell-hop played by Method Man who reveals that he regularly spies on the guests. Or the weird family who live at the bottom of the quarry… Ok, never mind. I would probably still edit that out.

The best part about that whole storyline was that there was no over-blown “come-to-Jesus” moment. Braf got the jewelry back, was kind of astonished that they had traveled around Jersey all day just for that, and Saarsgard, as most men would do in that situation, says, “See ya,” and is basically never heard from again. Had that been the whole movie, I could look back on it and say, “Now that was a quirky, little indie flick.” Instead, I look back and think, “He knew Natalie Portman for, what, a weekend? And he’s giving it all up for her?”

Like I said above, I do realize that this is mostly a matter of perspective, and there was a time when I thought this movie was really good. And there is the possibility that the countless indie copycats have made this one retroactively annoying. However, one thing I learned in all my screenwriting classes was that you have to write for the future. Unless you’re making The Wedding Singer, you really don’t want your movie to become dated in this way. And not by the clothes or music (because that soundtrack still holds up), but in the characters and their beliefs. If Zach Braf wanted to make a statement through Andrew Largeman, he shouldn’t have made one that would seem frivolous to anyone in their thirties.

When I was 17, I worked in a small, two-screen movie theater in Weymouth, MA, called the Cameo Theatre (note the English spelling, to connote that it was old, bot that it was fancy.) I made minimum wage, which at the time was $4.25 an hour, and each employee also got six free passes a month to go to the Cameo’s sister theater, which had actual first-run movies. The Cameo usually got the duds (We did play Alec Baldwin’s The Shadow first-run, so there’s that.) The employees, who were mostly 17 or 18 like myself, had an inside joke where we would drive by and yell, “Cameo Theater sucks!” at the top of our lungs during the summer when the doors were open. Despite the sucking, it may have been the best job I ever had.

The corporate honchos at Patriot’s Cinemas, the Cameo’s parent company, did try to get movies that they thought would play well to the locals, as the Cameo was very much a neighborhood establishment. And since there were gaggles of teens around, in the winter of 1994, we got Reality Bites, the Winona Ryder-Ethan Hawke “romantic” comedy that was supposed to be the 90’s version of The Breakfast Club. Obviously, it failed miserably at that (just as it failed to bring the local teens into the Cameo), but for some reason, the fact that I was a ticket-taker for this film gives it a special place in my heart. Part of the reason may be because I invited a group of female classmates to come see it on opening night, and snuck them in for free, and they actually thought I was cool for a change. Yeah, it was definitely that. Certainly wasn’t the Lisa Loeb song.

For those who have forgotten this forgettable movie, here’s the skinny; Winona’s character, Lelaina, who was valedictorian of her un-named university, is a budding filmmaker and has a job as a gopher on a morning talk show. Now, I wasn’t valedictorian, and I don’t think any film major would come close to being valedictorian, but I majored in film, and I probably would have killed for that job back in the day. But Lelaina wants to be an artist, so she is filming a documentary in her spare time about… whatever it is her and her friends are not doing. Unfortunately, since she’s twenty-two and buying groceries with her Dad’s gas card, she hates her life and her job and has no money and no boyfriend, so she’s sad. What she does have is a friendship which is wrought with sexual tension with Troy Dyer, the dreamy do-nothing played by Ethan Hawke. Jobless and homeless, Troy and his sidekick, Steve Zahn’s Sammy, have to move in with Lelaina and her roommate, an aspiring Gap manager played by Janeane Garafalo (Allow me to channel my inner Chandler Bing and ask: “Could this cast be any more 90’s?”). While the four of them living together seems like a recipe for disaster, I think I would like to live in a part of the world where two recent college grads can afford the rent for an apartment that can comfortably house four pretentious idiots.

The plot thickens when Lelaina begins dating Ben Stiller’s Michael, after a car accident that occurred when she threw her cigarette butt into his convertible. The 1990’s lesson here? Smoking can be good for you! Michael works for “In Your Face,” a made-up-for-the-movie MTV, “but with an edge.” Michael is awkward and wears a suit, and is boning his love interest, so Troy instantly despises him. Tensions run high, until Michael shows Lelaina’s doc footage on “In Your Face,” and it’s been edited and MTV-ized to make it more commercial. Too commercial as it turns out, as Lelaina leaves him and her big opportunity and runs into the arms of Troy The Bum. After sleeping with each other for the first time after years of built-up sexual tension, Troy freaks out, they have a fight, and he goes on stage (because of course, he’s in a band) and sings the Violent Femmes’ “Add It Up,” which features the totally appropriate lyric, “Why Can’t I Get Just One Screw?” Despite the harshness of that, and the emotional unavailability, the pretentiousness, and the unemployment, Lelaina decides that Troy and his nasty brown shirt are just too dreamy, and tells Michael, who has a job and a convertible and really does care about her, to go screw. It was the 90’s.

Add to that the product placement, the pop culture references, Vicky’s AIDS scare, Sammy coming out to his parents, the alternative soundtrack (which, ok, is pretty awesome) and the broad characterizations, and what we basically have is a 99 minute episode of The Real World. But that’s just the surface-level stuff. There is slightly more going on here, if you choose to look closer.

This is Ben Stiller’s first shot in the director’s chair, and he may have been young-ish, but he was no fool. Despite all of what I said above, the movie does have heart, and it totally captures what was going on in young America in 1994. We had been told our whole lives that we were unique and we could do whatever we wanted in life as long as we had the passion and the drive, and the blah, blah, blah. But it’s kind of a lie, because not everyone is going to end up doing whatever they want, because otherwise nobody would clean toilets for a living, unless they just don’t have the drive, or that happens to be their passion. Still, I was a lot like Lelaina back then, except way more cynical. But I did follow my friends around with a video camera because I thought everything we did was so poignant and funny. And I had friends who were like Troy, only way less dirty. So, while it seems like these characters are all mere tropes, they seemed all too real to me. The scary thing is thinking about what came first, the tropes, or the actual people acting like that? Did Ben Stiller make a movie that mirrored real life, or did people act that way because it was instilled in us by pop culture?

And what’s really scary is that the characters still seem real all these years later. Here’s why:

• I feel like Troy and Lelaina probably dated for a few years, through various highs and lows, until she grew tired of him not being able to commit to anything except a hobo lifestyle and they parted ways. She then went through her “fag-hag” phase, where she decided that no man could ever love her like a a gay man could. She finally did meet Mr. Right, who was pretty much an older version of Michael, while working her desk job, and lives with him and their two kids in the suburbs. She probably writes a food blog.
  

  Indeed.

• Troy Dyer drifted from job to job, supporting his drug habit along the way, and yet somehow always landing on his feet. Eventually he cleaned himself up and settled down and had a family. All of his friends thought he was amazing for pulling himself out of the gutter, when all he really did was stop screwing up his life. But people love a good yarn. One of my favorite movie lines of all-time, which may or may not apply here? George Clooney in Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? “I guess hard times’ll flush the chumps!“
• Even though the movie tried to paint Sammy as The Other for being “the gay  one,” he was by far the most normal one of them all, and his current life probably reflects that. And being a normal 40-something is a very cool thing to be these days.
• Vicky Miner still works at the Gap.

But Michael Grates, the somewhat awkward exec played by Ben Stiller? That’s the guy that I’m interested in, and his character is why the movie settles well with me. I came up with this ridiculous theory while driving back from Vermont recently, and “Baby, I Love Your Way” by Big Mountain was on the radio. It’s totally just made-up B.S. on my part, but it’s my rant, so here goes:

Michael is the second-act version of the character that Stiller later played in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (which he also directed and starred in). Walter is just as awkward, and single at his age, probably because people like Lelaina have walked all over him his entire life. Walter talked about his father passing away when he was 17, and at the time he had a mohawk and was an avid skate-boarder. But his father’s death forced him to grow up faster than he would have liked and start working to actually earn money (Not because his mother wanted him out of the house, which is how I came to work at the Cameo), so that’s why he had a good job at such a young age in Reality Bites, but dated a younger woman who represented a period of life that he missed out on. Yes, he did have Lelaina’s documentary footage edited to make it more mainstream, but that’s only because he was so much more mature than her that he realized her version would never fly. Maybe it was his longing to do something creative with his life that drew him to her, and was the reasons for his day-dreaming in Walter Mitty, because he was basically making little movies in his head. When the whole 90’s MTV craze thing ended, he then obviously changed his name to Walter Mitty and got a job as a Negative Assets Manager in the Photo Department at Life Magazine. I mean, it’s so obvious.

OK, that last part is a little far-fetched, but what I think it really speaks to is the kind of work that Stiller is drawn to. To him, and in a way to me, Reality Bites isn’t some delightful rom-com of twenty-somethings trying to make it in this topsy-turvy world. It’s a real coming-of-age story, because your 20’s is when you come of age, by making mistakes and learning from them and then, later in life, when you’re Walter Mitty, you can find a much better girl, who is unpretentious and actually funny instead of ironically funny.

And who is obviously Kristen Wiig.

I think Michael/Walter made out all right in the end.