Directed by: Ben Stiller
Starring: Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller, Steve Zahn, John Mahoney, Joe Don Baker
Four recent college grads have to decide what to do with their lives in Reality Bites, an uneven, clunky romantic comedy in which the hero Lelaina (Ryder) picks the wrong guy in the end over misplaced class loyalty. Reality Bites wants desperately to make the Ben Stiller character Michael, a hotshot television executive, the bad guy and he's actually a pretty nice guy. Meanwhile, the other man in Leilana's life is the overly cynical, hostile, chain-smoking layabout Troy (Hawke), who doesn't like that Leilana wants to produce documentaries and works on a local morning TV show. What a monstrous bore this Troy is. How Leilana sees anything in this jerk is beyond anyone's comprehension.
But Reality Bites trucks forward to its inevitable conclusion, as Leilana makes wrong career move after wrong career move and we're supposed to be...proud? happy? satisfied? We just shake our heads, as she does almost anything she can to win the unemployed musician Troy's approval, as if that is something special. I know, I know, Troy is masking his feelings for Leilana by being scornful and jerky toward her, and Leilana is missing the boat on how insightful and worldly Troy is calling the shots from his couch. Or actually Leilana's couch, since he is crashing at her place.
Granted, Leilana's boss, the phony morning show host (Mahoney) is grating, and she has little patience with him, but this is what pays the bills until Leilana can finish her supposedly rousing documentary about she and her friends' lives after college. The footage will give you vertigo watching it. Leilana never asks a fundamental question, why would anyone want to see it? Judging from what was shot already with her shaky video camera, the subjects aren't interesting. She meets Michael following a car accident. Yes, he's a yuppie type with a slick car and a high-paying job, but he's sweet and supportive.
Against his better professional judgment, Michael passes the idea of Leilana's documentary to his bosses and they love it (only in the movies) and after sprucing things up for commercial appeal, Leilana is appalled at the finished product and dumps Michael. Michael, I guess, is supposed to represent the sellout culture by frankly improving Leilana's work by making it palatable. How dare he mess with Leilana's masterpiece?
Occasionally, Troy is allowed to be something other than a judgmental prick when his father dies, and I suppose that is meant to humanize him, but it doesn't erase that he was such an unlikable guy for the first three quarters of the movie. The actors try their best to make something of these people, but the underlying message that all successful people in their 20's are sellouts and those who aren't financially successful yet are the true visionaries is restrictive and silly. Maybe Leilana and Troy deserve each other after all, and in five years, Leilana will regret her choices.
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