Movie review of Reality Bites

I watched Reality Bites (with very young Winona Ryder, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo and Ethan Hawke).  This was my first time watching it since it came out in 1994.

I thought it was "okay" back then, and that assessment is still true for me today.  It was "fine", and I was vaguely curious to see how it ended -- but because it was on DVD I kept getting up to do other things, and then drifting back a few hours later.  It took me twelve hours complete an hour-and-a-half movie:  I was hardly "captivated".

They ticked a few boxes for the period:  the soft job market, an AIDS scare, a guy "coming out" to his parents.  But most of the characters were annoying, and/or unrealistic:  playing a (public!) practical joke on your boss, and then being surprised that you got fired?  A guy in upper management not knowing the term "court jester", and referring to "Intelligence Quotations" rather than "Intelligence Quotients".


Moderate cussing, and discussions about sex.  No violence that I recall.  One scene where a character didn't wear a bra under her clothes, which I didn't pick up on until my wife pointed it out.


Worth seeing once, just 'cause it's semi-well-known, and "of an era".


--GG