VividSimon Simply Perfect

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

MisterWhiplash Richard Linklater's adaptation of Eric Bogosian's subUrbia is revelatory in the smaller sense because, like any good play, it follows the characters personalities by way of where they're at in the location(s), and their conflicts, even if things involving the characters are fairly simplistic. With these guys and girls in their early 20s, there's not much to do, and little to aspire to. Jeff (Ribisi) knows he doesn't know what he wants to do, and is almost perfectly comfortable with that, even if his frustration comes out all the time; Tim (Katt, maybe his best performance, if a little limited) is an ex-dish washer from the army who is about as aggravated as imaginable, but often with a seething angst under the surface as faux anarchist aspirations; Soozie (Carey) is the typical girl who wants to get out of town and do something and bring along a guy- in this case quasi-boyfriend Jeff- who isn't too interested in it for reasons of hesitation in the guise of pragmatism; Buff (a pure goof-ball Zahn) has had his brain melted by alcohol and marijuana, and yet is very sweet and like a kind of Harpo with a Beavis & Butthead complex; and Pony (Barok) is the nerdy goodie-too-shoes who got out of town and became a star, but plays insufferable music and is a Primadonna.Around these characters, plus a semi-rehabilitated alcoholic Spybey's Bee-Bee (who reveals this only later on in the film, maybe the most TV-movie but disquieting in suburban tragedy of the bunch), Linklater uses Bogosian's impressive dialog to make this occasionally very funny, mostly due to Zahn's random antics involving himself throwing around objects (including people sometimes), and with the zinger one-liners from sardonic Ribisi, but also more contemplative about the nature of the 90s youth slummers. It's appropriate that Ebert made comparisons to Waiting for Godot, as it has that quality of digging very harshly and in a half-satiric half-naturalistic manner. It may be a parody of pretension seeing Sooze do her interpretive dance, but maybe it isn't at the same time, which lends the humor of seeing her as a double-edged sword: if one's around this age, if not even from this generation, there's probably someone in a group like this who has misguided creativity. Or Katt's character, who is maybe the most stereotypical, particularly in the heated arguments with a convenience store owner (Naidu, far removed from his Office Space role if just as anxious), but has inklings of truth to him as a representation of the real losers among the slackers.And then Ribisi, the 'hero' of the story, is actually kind and 'true', as he tries to see it, but is there giving commentary on situations, like Pony doing an impromptu musical performance for his former high-school buddies in a laundromat parking lot, and is also only so much critical of himself. It's basically a small view into people who you probably might see sometime going to a 7-11 if you're in a suburban malaise kind of town where all the practical things- eating, finding maybe one girl or guy, getting laundry done, getting good and drunk, and education- can be done, but it's also a trap where the loop inspires feelings of change, minor fun, and indifference, as well as the usual disgust. Towards the end if does lean towards the preachy: the altercations between Katt and Nazeer are the least effective portions, and even the disturbing fate of Bee-Bee reeks of a contrivance that can only come from a play. But there's a lot of rich material here- if not as wholly successful as Linklater's most successful portrait in Dazed and Confused, or as ambitious as Slacker- and it merits a repeat viewing sometime, most likely without the aid of much alcohol, which the characters here take as a sort of assist in making things even more dull and, if you're Zahn, a lot more fun in a distanced way.

The_Void I'm a big fan of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, as well as the excellent, yet little known 'Tape' - but this film, SubUrbia (silly 'U' in the title), doesn't live up to the high standard of the latter mentioned films. Linklater obviously has respect for drama and dialogue, but he's let himself down here because a lot of the action and words in the film are silly, and delivered by a bunch of caricatures. We've got the irritating feminist, the famous guy trying to hang out with his old friends, a rich bitch with a heart of gold, a drunk who cant take his beer, a drunk who can, a girl out of rehab and a guy who holds everything together, simply by being more drab than the rest of them. The cast try their best with their characters, and the film isn't 'boring' - but it stinks of a decent film striving for greatness, and it never even nearly achieves it. The plot is basically about a bunch of Americans 'kids' that hang around parking lots, as they have nothing else to do. The film takes place around the same time that some guy they used to know, now a big rock star, is coming home to 'hang out' with them.Not much of this film is really believable. I don't think that Giovanni Ribisi's character would ever go out with the irritating feminist, for example, and a series of things like this make the film really difficult to get along with. The film is based on a play by Eric Bogosian, so it's unfair to blame Linklater (who I actually like) for the film's shortcomings with the characters; but to be fair, his direction is lethargic and doesn't really get along with the hip style that the film feels like it should have. Most of the characters are annoying rather than likable, and this means that by the time of the ending; you really don't care what happens. This is made worse by the fact that this is one of those 'ambiguous' films that leaves itself wide open at the end. Writers really need to learn when to, and when not to, use an ending like this. Ambiguous endings simply don't work when it doesn't matter what happens, and rather than making you think as the writer intended; it just turns you off. I appreciate this film a little because I like dialogue; but to be honest, there isn't a lot I can recommend it for. I do like the song, "A Town Without Pity", used in the opening credits though.

Charles Herold (cherold) I would be curious to compare this with the original play, which I've never seen. Bogosian is a great writer and Linklatter seems like an odd choice to match with a strong dialog writer, since he goes for this numbly, seemingly improvisational style. That style fits this subject matter perfectly well, and he does capture that bored, pointless bitterness, but I'm wondering if a different director with the same script might have managed to make something that felt a little more intense. This movie just sort of ambled along with interesting little bits of drama here and there. It's all sort of interesting, the performances seem pretty good, but I was never drawn into this and I never cared about the characters, although they were convincing.

igarrett It was a play first, vey often produced over the last decade. Linklater can't be blamed for the story or any of that. Its a film version of a play.. like house of yes, or the upcming Angels in America, or the LAramie Project. And, the main difference between a film and a play is that a play's script is not up for discussion along with the action as it is not a unique single act, it is an interpretation by a director of the playwright's words. A movie script on the other hand goes hand in hand with the action as it is meant to be created as one entity.That aside as a common misconception for so many people I see reviewing plays like they were movies (leave the script alone talk about acting and direction), I like Suburbia.