Review of Dazed and Confused (1993) by Alex A — 27 Sep 2013

Because of glowing reviews and the fact that several people were recommending this movie to me, Dazed and Confused was recently a pretty high film on my watch list. I'll admit that the film had some good acting, solid camera angles and some great music, but as far as the writing and story structure goes, I really didn't think the film was as great or memorable as it's fans claim it to be.

I felt that the film captured the essence of a generic cliché of high school life instead of capturing it's actual essence. Every character is pretty much a charactercher of their social group (ex.

Nerd, jock, stoner etc.) and not developed or likeable characters with personalities of their own, but instead they act as quintessential versions of their social groups. The films narrative also seems to be pretty aimless and shallow as the characters, because for most of the movie just focuses on the characters going from one wacky shenanigan to the next shenanigan without any real growth or development.

The other problem is that so many of the hijinks depicted in the movie are so ridiculously over-the-top that it's very difficult to believe that they actually happened anywhere. The film tries to come across as the ultimate voice of about teenaged life and experience, but the filmakers never take the time to create real characters or situations to make the characters either interesting or meaningful.

Ultimately the film tries to do for high school student's in the 70s what American Graffiti did for them in the 60s, but it falls short of American Graffiti in almost every single way. There's a few funny moments and a couple of good scenes, but all together I just can't call it a good movie.