LOSER (2000)
Grade: D
Director: Amy Heckerling
Screenplay: Amy Heckerling
Starring: Jason Biggs, Mena Suvari, Greg Kinnear, Zack Orth, Thomas Sadoski, Jimmi Simpson, Dan Aykroyd, Twink Caplin, Mollie Israel, Steven Wright, David Spade, Andy Dick
LOSER is a college film about people far too stupid to attend any college. (Director Amy Heckerling would be much more honest in pluralizing her title). Its hero is introduced in a montage that has him dropping books and ineptly attempting to make conversation with strangers, sometimes while simultaneously dropping books. He's such an unbelievable doofus that he falls into class, rolling down the stairs, and leaps up with Urkel like precision, murmuring "I meant that". It's clear that we're supposed to like this imbecile but he's too much of an idiot for that.
Jason Biggs (the guy who garnered an MTV MOVIE AWARD nomination for copulating with baked goods in AMERICAN PIE) plays the title role of Paul, a country bumpkin who gets accepted to a prestigious college where he's used and made fun of by his creepy roommates, and stepped on by a rudely intellectual teacher. The teacher (Greg Kinnear), one of those fellows who casually insults his students, is dating a student, Dora, played by the winsome Mena Suvari (who acts like a pre-schooler behind an 80's rock chick hairdo and an abundance of goth eye liner). Dora is so dim she fails to realize that the teacher is obviously using her, despite that he does all but spell it out. So naturally her and Paul are made for each other, though both are too braindead to grasp this; maybe the teacher should spell it out for them.
Paul's roommates harass and attempt to get him kicked out of the dorm because he's not like them. The poor schmo ends up staying at animal shelter, then later lets one of his roommates (who he knows lied to have him kicked out for no good reason) throw a party at the shelter (where he knows he is responsible for anything that happens), at which they drug Dora and leave a staggering mess in their wake. Paul takes Dora to the hospital and discovers that she's dating the teacher and that the teacher, after being notified of her condition, hasn’t bothered to show up. So what does Paul do? He actually buys flowers for Dora and signs a card in the teacher's name. Not only is this forgery, it's downright dangerous for Paul to keep Dora in a relationship he knows is unethical and abusive yet he does so anyway. And we're supposed to be rooting for this fellow, a guy so simpleminded he's beyond pathetic, he's hazardous.
The film has the notion of heaping an unbelievable amount of punishment on both its characters, for I dunno, laughs? Paul's every attempt to be social is an unfunny misfire. Meanwhile Dora goes on a bunch of typically goofy job interviews in which she is insulted for asking normal questions. (Worthless observation: whenever the film allows its central characters to be intelligent, it makes all the characters around them idiots; it's as if Heckerling has something against showing large groups of people actually being reasonably intelligent at the same time).
Although the movie has similarities to Heckerling's better films, like the two lovers unknowingly sniffing each other out, done well in the relationship between Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd in CLUELESS, and between Jennifer Jason Leigh and Brian Backer in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, here the characters are too blandly sugary and naïve to engage us. They commit the horrible movie sin of being boring. LOSER attempts to combine the sweetness of CLUELESS (which was really a very clever prolonged episode of SAVED BY THE BELL rather than the teen classic it seems to be being made out to be) and the painful coming of age stuff that permeated the edges of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH. FAST TIMES was written by Cameron Crowe (ALMOST FAMOUS) who actually went undercover as a high school student to write the most realistic account of teenagers he could (he turned it into a book documenting his experiences, then subsequently adapted his own book for the film), and that picture feels authentic with its naive sexual experiences, embarrassing misunderstandings and raunchy curiosity about the opposite sex. For coming of age realism LOSER gives us three impossibly cruel hipsters who goof on Paul mercilessly without even being funny or clever about it. In a misguided attempt at drama (I think) this group constantly holds parties where they secretly drug girls with roofies.
Biggs is trimmer now than in AMERICAN PIE, though he doesn't retain the same likeable awkwardness despite that he's supposed to be playing an even geekier character than the one he played in that film. If it weren't for his dopey (but not completely idiotic) fashion sense, or his occasional inability to walk without crashing into things, he'd be a laid back guy with a sunnier disposition than most. Though when ever you begin to forget how much of a loser the fellow is, Heckerling has him do something unbearably stupid to remind you.
The coquettish Suvari lets her big googly eyes do all the acting for her. She seems more suited for teen princess roles than anything else seeing as how her style is Cameron Diaz at her most valley girlish combined with Heather Graham at her most preening. Greg Kinnear proves he's adept at playing a cartoonishly cynical professor. Kinnear is given many of the pictures cleverest lines, and the actor manages to acquit himself better than Eric Bogosian did as a similarly droll professor earlier this year in GOSSIP.
Notes on what I happened to like about the picture: David Spade shows up as a video store clerk in what may be his most amusing appearance ever in a film (slight praise on this web page, but still, it's worth a chuckle); Dan Aykroyd appears briefly as a Biggs' father and he isn't a tyrannical lout but a nice guy who gives his son some fairly obvious though well intentioned advice; And in one scene, this coming at the beginning, Paul playfully dances with his little sister and we can tell the two kids adore each other, Paul even casually hugs her as if he means it, and that's one of the first times I can remember seeing a positive sibling relationship in an American teen movie, even if it was just for fifty seconds. That these bits (collectively adding up to approximately 2.5 minutes of a 99 minute movie) are the only memorable things about the LOSER experience is awfully telling of the experience that it is.