GamerTab That was an excellent one.

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

SmileysWorld I wasn't really wowed by this film.It doesn't really have a captivating story,great scenery or great special effects (the latter is never really necessary anyway).What you have is a group of guys,each of them representing someone most of us know or have heard of.We are introduced to them,and over the course of the film,we get to know them,and by film's end,we had an overall pleasant time.The film has a place on the AFI's 100 Years,100 Laughs list,which brought me to watch it.I don't question it's placement there because we all have different senses of humor,but I can't say that it really generated a lot of laughs for me personally.Overall,it was enjoyable enough and I may visit it again one day.

p-stepien The everyday life of six friends concentrically focuses around a diner - in some manner symbolising a sense of nonfluctuating stability, whilst everything else around them changes: marriage, children, work and ideals. Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) is on the verge of getting hitched, laden with certain doubts about his choice. Shrevie (Daniel Stern), the only married man among the bunch, is a musical geek happily wed to Beth (Ellen Barkin). Boogie (Mickey Rourke) represents the opposite, a free spirit with a weakness for gambling and women, studying law only to impress the ladies. Similarly Timothy Fenwick Jr. (Kevin Bacon) lives recklessly and aimlessly - despite belonging to a wealthy and influential family he spends his time disconnected from them and slacking it off in his Porsche. Billy (Tim Daly) seems to be the groups father figure, rational and always controlled. That is until he platonic friend declares she is pregnant with his child after a single night of madness. The sixth of the pack is Modell (Paul Reiser), whose seemingly only role is to make up the numbers.Through this loquacious picture haplessly concentrating key events around a diner slash meeting place of choice for six best friends we venture into the feeling of a time and place, one so internally American than it fails to strike a cord with overseas audience. Mischievous and at times subversively funny the end result is however tailor-made for local audiences, who can fully appreciate the backyard amiability of the witty gang. Not to say this is a bad thing - some things aren't meant to have global appeal and within its target it is undoubtedly an intriguing gem, one still influential for buddy or verbose flicks and also a point of reference for such movies as "Before Sunrise" or "Smoke".Talkative and largely improvised features tirades by great actors, whose magnetic presence captivates, especially when talking about Bacon or Rourke. Despite however my best intentions I found myself unable to relate to the characters and their all-American traits.

PWNYCNY This movie provides a glimpse into the difference between true friendship and mutual association. in this movie all the principle know each other, talk with each other, even spend a lot of time with each other, but they are not friends. That is, although there is an appearance of camaraderie, they really don't care about each other. Although the movie lacks a conventional plot, it still tells a story about people who play off each other with dramatic results. Unlike, let's say, the principle group of friends in Deer Hunter, in which the group is held tightly together by bonds of religion ethnicity and cultural heritage, the glue holding together the group in diner is much weaker and less definable, and may not even exist. All they do is talk, laugh, and complain, and it does not take much to split the group apart. Perhaps the point of the movie is to dramatize the tenuousness of relationships and not to bank on seeking support from those you hang out with because they may not be there for you. Now, the cast is universally excellent with Mickey Rourke delivering the strongest performance. His character is the one that comes closest to being a real friend, yet even he is involved with stuff that sets him apart form the others. Ellen Barkin also gives a strong performance as the woman who is a symbol of everything the guys talk about regarding women. This is a good movie that provides dramatic treatment of group dynamics in a fluid social context.

ProfessorFate Not much happens in the course of director Barry Levinson's film "Diner". A bunch of college-aged guys in late 1950's Baltimore gather over the Christmas holidays and eat french fries with gravy at their favorite local diner and talk about "stuff" . . . oh yeah, they also confront the painful necessity of making the transition from carefree adolescence to the responsibilities of adulthood.The reason for the gathering: Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) is getting married. TV salesman Shrevie (Daniel Stern) is already married and prefers to cling to his single friends lifestyle instead of trying to understand his wife, Beth (Ellen Barkin). Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) is the smart and cynical black sheep son of a rich family, who seems to have a drinking problem. Boogie (Mickey Rourke) is a hairstylist/law student and a smooth-talking ladies man, but his mounting gambling debts are getting him into trouble. Billy (Timothy Daley) has escaped to college and gotten involved in a messy romance with a longtime platonic girlfriend. Then there's Modell (Paul Reiser), the soft-spoken philosopher/comedian of the group, who ponders the meaning of the word "nuance" and, in the film's funniest scene, torments Eddie over a roast beef sandwich. Eddie himself is a lazy, immature-yet-amiable lout who is making his bride-to-be pass a football quiz before tying the knot. The interaction between these friends sets in motion a story that is as deep as the meaning of life, and as shallow as the question of who's the better singer - Sinatra or Mathis? "Diner" is simply one of the best movies ever made about male-bonding. Working from a highly autobiographical script, director Barry Levinson has created a masterful comedy and an insightful character study. What he does so well is capture the way guys act when women aren't around - they smoke and drink and stay up all night and laugh and talk about cars and music and sports, and of course they rack their brains trying to figure out the opposite sex. Any woman wanting to understand the male psyche would do well to study this film.More importantly he also perfectly captures the feeling of inevitable change hanging over these characters. There's this wistful desire to hang on to past relationships, to revel in familiar people and places before moving forward, before dealing with the anxiety of the approaching unknown. It's this quality that makes "Diner" such a special film. It can be enjoyed on a surface level for it's humor and nostalgia, or you can dig deeper and appreciate the profound observations it makes on the human condition. Either way it is an amazing film.