Order Dazed & Confused [DVD] Today!

You remember high school? Really remember?
If you think you do, watch this film: it'll all really come racing back.
After changing the world with the generation-defining Slacker,
director Richard Linklater turned his free-range vérité sensibility
on the 1970s. As before, his all-seeing camera meanders across a landscape
studded with goofy pop culture references and poignant glimpses
of human nature. Only this time around, he's spreading a thick
layer of nostalgia over the lens (and across the soundtrack).
It's as if Fast Times at Ridgemont High was directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
The story deals with a group of friends on the last day of high
school, 1976. Good-natured football star Randall "Pink" Floyd
navigates effortlessly between the warring worlds of jocks, stoners,
wannabes, and rockers with girlfriend and new-freshman buddy in tow. Surprisingly,
it's not a coming-of-age movie, but a film that
dares ask the eternal, overwhelming, adolescent
question, "What happens next?" It's a little too honest to be a
light comedy (representative quote: "If I ever say these
were the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself.").
But it's also way too much fun (remember souped-up
Corvettes and bicentennial madness?) to be just another
existential-essay-on-celluloid.
Grant Balfour