twhiteson "Reality Bites" was a trumped-up MTV-like production about characters who are nothing more than Generation X stereotypes: unemployed or underemployed, college grad "slackers" with encyclopedic knowledge of 1970's pop culture. Essentially, it's a 99 minute dramatized "Real Word" episode about four friends who struggle with their post college lives. However, two of the characters (Janeane Garafolo and Steve Zahn) are so underdeveloped that they could have been dropped from the film. The film focuses almost entirely on "Lelaina" (an extremely pretty Winona Ryder) and "Troy" (Ethan Hawke) whose "friends-to-possible lovers" relationship develops into a bewildering love triangle when TV executive "Michael" (Ben Stiller who also directed) enters the scene and makes a play for Lelaina."Reality Bites" has a trite plot which is additionally hurt by its thoroughly unlikable characters especially Mr. Hawke's contemptible Troy. Scuzzy, manipulative, mooching, arrogant, and conceited and those are Troy's good traits! An unemployed philosophy major who plays guitar in a bad grunge band, Troy is played-up as the archetypal 1990's hipster-slacker who has taken hardened stances against getting a job and washing his hair. And when confronted by the kind and responsible Michael as a rival for Lelaina's affections, he oozes his contempt for "corporate America" (ie anyone who has a job). In other words, he's a complete jerk!The love triangle here makes no sense other than maybe to the prove to so-called "Nice Guys" everywhere that good looking women actually do prefer arrogant, d-bag creeps just because they're arrogant, d-bag creeps.The mystery of this film has always been: are we actually supposed to like and admire Troy? It made no sense in 1994 and even less today. My only theory is that Ben Stiller, overwhelmed by his directing duties, played Michael as too much of a decent man rather than the shallow "suit" that the screenplay probably required. But a shallow "suit" would STILL be preferable to Troy!In sum: it really is a case of "nice guys finishing last" as Troy walks-off with the ditzy and shallow Lelaina at film's end. Yet, as another reviewer put it nicely, she didn't deserve Michael if she thinks a relationship with a sleazy leech like Troy is going to lead to anything but heartbreak.(One side note: it's clear that Ethan Hawke thought Troy was pretty cool because he stayed in character as him for the next 15 years.)

eric262003 Being that I was seventeen and in my twilight years in high school, I watch "Reality Bites" as a friendly wake-up call to the stuff that's going to affect me in the years ahead. Prior to this movie, ambition was running through my veins as fear and doubt about my future was in tow. As the days of graduation was upon me, I knew I needed some movie that might inspire me to be the very best I could be in whatever endeavours that comes upon me. The scene that hit me the most was when aspiring filmmaker Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder) thought that she had her life mapped out by the time she was 23, while her floundering but compassionate boyfriend Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke) consoles to her sentiments by saying in a nutshell that you should just be yourself at 23. Those words were both poetic and hypnotic.We're first introduced to Leliana, Troy, Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) and Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn) chilling on a rooftop in downtown Houston, Texas, celebrating with a few beers after graduating from college, while Alice Cooper's classic rocker "School's Out For Summer" is heard in the background. Leliana decides the perfect time to capture the four on film to discuss their plans for the future. Sammy just wants to find a career, Vickie who works at the Gap just wants to memorize her social security number at full speed and Troy who's been working minimum wage jobs is a few credits short of obtaining his philosophy degree doesn't feel the necessity of finishing it off.From the camerawork of Leliana's opaque surroundings, the characters go on their journeys to explore the many avenues of post-graduate life as the film takes off from there. Troy gets a job at a convenience store only to get fired shortly after stealing a candy bar. He eventually moves into the Maxi Pad with Leliana and Vickie with the sexual urges between Leliana and Troy becoming more prominent while sharing moments of bickering and flirting. Leliana's filming career gets a head-start when she gets hired by an executive named Michael Grates (Ben Stiller) who works at a MTV like station.Leliana gets fired from her job as a production assistant for feeding subjective cue cards to her boss which then finds the young hopeful's dream severely crushed as she's sulking on the living room couch and having phone charges of $300 for phoning a psychic. At this time I was hoping her external problems can be rejuvenated with a metaphoric angel coming her way to deliver the message of hope. Well that metaphoric angel was Michael as he showed her documentary to the upper echelons of his network and they want to buy the footage.Excited, she attends the premiere of her documentary only to be shocked that it had been tweaked from a film about the struggling life of Generation X to a Reality Show based program with her friends being reduced to individual segments of their lives, from the apathetic rebel, to the sex-crazed party girl, the ambitious overachiever to the token gay guy. Lelaina cries her way home only to find Troy alone in the apartment. Their on-again off again relationship finally settles and they end up sleeping with each other.The romantic pity sex these two friends encounter is summed up with a series of tranquil moments of peace and serenity. But then out of left field, Troy leaves her which causes a bit of a rift as she was trying to get her life back together again. After a nasty breakup, Troy goes back to Chicago to visit his dying father which Lelaina didn't know. He eventually returned to her yard a she was trying to find him in hopes to reconcile their friendship.The thing about "Reality Bites" that strikes me harder than a thunderbolt, is that not all broken relationships can be repaired. After an abrupt breakup, my girlfriend moved away and we lost contact forever without a reason or explanation. Not that I wouldn't be heartbroken if an explanation or a Dear John letter would be sufficient, but it would have some disclosure and I would move forward with my life. At least Troy did make amends with Lelaina and came back into her life.What sickens me the most is that why was Troy the inevitable puzzle piece for Lelaina? I'm okay with the happy ending and all sure and the message of love being the glue to moments of insecurity and to take the important stuff of where we go from here. But it's still to me just a lot of hyperbole to the max. My envy for Lelaina made me wish our worlds were reversed. Troy didn't hold up to his compromises, only time will tell. Don't expect his car to pull up on your driveway.

teddyhose It's like a vortex, the Reality Bites pitch video Ben Stiller's character shows Winona's is actually THIS MOVIE! The writer must've made a checklist of all of the 90's "edgy topics" like AIDS, homosexuality, and then threw in some 80's "parents just don't understand", making for a very after school special like tsunami of cheese. It looks promising from the cover but it's really a Hollywood movie trying to act like an indie flick, a product of grunge being highly marketable that year. It didn't do it for me when I saw its debut at 16, and after giving it another try just now it's even worse than what I remember. I really hope future generations don't refer to this film to see what life was like back then. It doesn't come close to having the same depth John Hughes movies had the previous decade.I guess this is Ben Stiller's directorial debut and I'm so glad he went on to do comedy instead. You can see some of his self deprecating humor when he freaks out at Ethan Hawke's character near the end.I don't know if there is a really definitive Generation X 90's movie, I'd vote Chasing Amy if I had to pick one though.

tieman64 "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Goethe "Work Makes Freedom" - sign above Auschwitz entrance The directorial debut of Ben Stiller, "Reality Bites" is a well meaning but slight film which hopes to capture the tempo and anxieties of Generation X. The film revolves around a small cast of young adults (Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben Stiller, Steve Zahn), all of whom are raging caricatures. There's the artist, the sex junkie, the drop out, the corporate sell out and of course the always-precious Winona Ryder, who serves as our window into their world. She faces well worn conflicts: does she pursue a career in the arts, or trade her dreams and aspirations for a "reliable" corporate job? Does she settle down with a "loser" musician, or a likable but stiff businessman in a suit? At the heart of the film is therefore a tug-of-war between the logic and rationales of techno capitalism and the sensitive soul's vague yearnings for something else.Whilst the film is absent of analysis or serious insight, it does capture a certain relevant vacuity. Stiller's whiny young adults hang in limbo, aimless, lethargic, high-strung and always placating themselves with material or biochemical pleasures. Deeming the adult world abhorrent, they flutter in the wind, unable to function in it, but unable to conceive of, latch onto or find something else.Other anxieties abound: fears of rejection, poverty, success and judgement turn all these characters into emotion wrecks. They're stuck in post graduate delirium and quarter life crises, some pushed into self promotion, solipsism and competition, others opting to instead drop out of the game altogether.Like all these films, "Reality Bites" turns its back on a deeper reality. It ignores the fact that its anxieties are essentially social symptoms spawned by social systems. Indeed, our very neurological structure is closely tied to, and is necessarily continuous with, environmental relations, which are themselves directly responsible for certain neurological or synaptic connections flourishing or atrophying and dying off. In a very real sense, you are continually being built by the "outside". By individualising what is systemic, these films thus override the possibility of their subjects becoming agents, rather than patients, of their symptoms.Whilst there are hundreds of films like "Reality Bites" about Generation's Xers, Generation Y's anxieties don't seem to make it to cinema screens. Maybe they've been completely inculcated, have self medicated themselves into zombiedom, or simply have no use for cinema, the stuffy medium of their forefathers. Perhaps with interactive media supplanting old media, the quaint idea of stories, and even the audience/object dichotomy itself, is displaced by a situation in which the anxiety tale is writ on the subject itself; their virtual and real bodies are the new anxiety performance.Cynicism and irony were a huge part of Generation X's identity. They saw the ideals, dreams and possibilities of the Baby Boomers get thoroughly squashed. The result was a generation which recognised the "reality" that rebellion and honest dissent would either fail or make one a laughing stock. Authentic emotional expression was to be buried or cocooned in irony/cynicism, lest one risk ridicule or hurt. But Generation X at least knew how to smell BS. Generation Y's thoroughly of the post-everything, multicultural, accept-everything entertainment world. They're both stronger and more fragile, supremely confident and well adjusted, but perhaps with a nihilism buried so deep they're not even aware of it, shuffling off to the abattoir with smiling faces, heads bobbing to personalised play-lists. No surprise that The Journal of Social Psychology reports that Millennials think about social problems less, have less interest in government, family and community, and have a very inflated sense of self which in turn leads to unrealistic expectations and chronic disappointment. They're also pushing back each of the five milestones of adulthood: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having kids. But maybe this is all overly pessimistic. Maybe it's stereotyping. Maybe every generation's a mass of differences, simultaneously ahead of its time, of its time, and of the past. Or maybe it's prophetic that our next generation will be dubbed Generation Z; a nation of snoozers.7.5/10 - Worth one viewing.