Haters Gonna Hate: Reality Bites edition

I suppose I knew that nominating a movie like Reality Bites would get me called on the carpet, so it seems inevitable that I would be writing a defense of my hatred. Full disclosure: my hatred was born in an association with one of the absolute worst human beings I’ve ever had the displeasure of knowing, who held as his personal hero one Troy Dyer, the hobo at the heart of this little cinematic gem. Not that I ever loved the movie, but once I became disgusted with Troy the veil was lifted, and I was able to see the movie for what it really was. And what is it? So glad you asked. Come window-shopping down the avenue of horrors with me, won’t you?

As the movie opens, we see Lelaina (a twee little Winona Ryder) intoning a speech at her college graduation. Because as anyone who never went to college knows, commencement addresses are typically given by random students, not celebrities or famous alumni. “But!” you cry, your voice trembling with the sting of the indignity, “She is obviously the valedictorian!” To which I respond: #1) no she’s not—she’s not very bright (as we will soon see); and #2) valedictorians give commencement addresses at high school graduations. Also—“disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes”? WAY TO STICK IT TO THE MAN AND HIS JOGGING ROUTINE. The speech is played for comedic effect—she loses her notes and still manages to make a splash. Has the movie lost me already? Yes. But I forge ahead.

The movie plays up the dichotomy between the friends’ graduation celebration and the parents’. Troy plays guitar with his teeth and throws a tassel off of a building (cool!). The parents are eating some bourgeois dinner in some pedestrian restaurant (lame!). Troy, Lelaina, and their friends Vickie and Sammy sing “Schoolhouse Rocks”, so we know they’re cool without having to think about it too hard. The parents have Southern accents, so that we’ll know they’re idiots without requiring further evidence (although the movie thoughtfully shows one of the women cutting one of the men’s food for him, in what is probably the only “show-don’t-tell” moment of the movie, so). Vickie professes that the only thing she learned in college is her social security number—time well-spent! Troy is even cooler—he didn’t even finish! We have a four-way tie in the awesomeness contest!

Okay, I’ve realized that if I attempt to catalogue every piece of refuse that comes spewing out of these characters’ garbage holes, we will be here until 2012. So I will attempt to summarize, although bear in mind that I’m leaving out far more than I’m including. But I have notes. Oh, do I ever have notes.

Let me sum up: the truth is that I like Vickie and Sammy. I like the actors, I like their subplots…it’s like Janeane Garofalo and Steve Zahn wander in and out of terrible plotlines like refugees from a better movie. Every time I watch this movie it’s like hoping that maybe this time Juliet will wake up before Romeo drinks the poison; I get a little surge of warm hope that maybe this time the movie will revolve around Vickie and Sammy, only to have my dreams dashed when Troy rubs brownie on Lelaina’s face (because love, obviously).

We meet another character that I like, Michael, when Lelaina tosses her cigarette butt into his car, causing an accident (because that is how committed she is to preventing any sort of work from happening). I like Michael because he is honestly a decent guy. He tries to help Lelaina’s career. He has no foreknowledge of what his network is going to do to her “documentary” (note: explain to Lelaina the difference between stoned home movies and deliberate artistic statements). When she is upset by what happened to her documentary he tries to make amends (again, despite having done exactly nothing wrong).

And now, for what I don’t like:

Show, Don’t Tell: The movie tells us that Lelaina is smart, but she can’t add and she can’t define irony. The movie tells us that Troy is a musician and places a guitar in his hand, and he sings a couple of crappy songs near the end. We know that Lelaina and Troy are best friends because she says so, and in direct defiance of the fact that they get on each others’ nerves for 90% of the movie and on each others’ nuts for the other 10%. The movie doesn’t want to trouble us with the difficult work of coming to conclusions about these people—why waste precious time characterizing when there are so many eighties songs to sing in the gas station?

Troy: When Yeats wrote the words “No Second Troy”, what he meant was “Please Don’t Make a Movie about This Oily Asshole”. He never says anything that is not dripping, like grease from his hair, with sarcasm. The question is not “why does Lelaina like him?” but “why does anyone?”. He gets fired from one of his jobs for stealing a Snickers bar. What is the justification there? “Who needs gainful adult employment when the ESTABLISHMENT owes me a Snickers?” His entire life philosophy can be summed up as, “If I ever get my shit together, I’ll die.” Blaming one’s problems on the unfairness of the world is so hot right now.

Lelaina: She can’t add, the few smarts she does have seem devoted entirely to ripping off her well-meaning father by extorting money from him, and she disses Vickie’s job by being all above working at the GAP. I take it back. I get the attraction to Troy.

I would love to imagine that this movie is meant as a cautionary tale about rudderless adolescents trapped in adult bodies. If you refuse to wash your hair, then no one will finance your documentary! But the final scene shows Lelaina and Troy joyously embracing as her father’s voice inquires via answering machine about her credit card fraud. Ha ha! High five! He was dumb enough to trust you! Cut! Print! KILL ME. The moral is that these two win, and that makes me feel that, in a very real way, all of us lose.

Final note: pothead momma and cokehead dad? NOPE.

Looking forward to Frank Lloyd Wrong's retort. Maybe it turns out I've been Baby Friday Wrong all these years. (Hint: nope.)