Review of Diner (1982) by Carlos I — 14 Mar 2017

3/5 Stars. A decent film, if pretty empty of plot. The director admitted he structured it very much like a proto-Seinfeld, where the everyday stuff that goes on is the story in and of itself. That said, it doesn't flow nearly as well and just kind of plods along without much direction. It's meant to be a Guy Film, in that it's primarily about a group of young guys doing young guy stuff: fighting, arguing, chasing girls, driving fast cars, etc.

Ironically, I found the most compelling portion of the film to be the scenes involving Mickey Rourke (who is damn near unrecognizable to the modern eye) and Ellen Barkin, as well as the prelude featuring Daniel Stern (Marv from Home Alone, wut), which covered Barkin's character's failing marriage to Stern's and her subsequent comfort found in the arms of Rourke. Barkin's acting in these scenes was superb, I should note. Rourke had been the suave playboy up to this point in the film, and seduced Barkin into having sex with him so as to pay off a debt (long spoiler story), but just as he's about to get her to the apartment, he decides it's wrong. The film does a good job of building Rourke up as fairly unscrupulous, so this comes as a bit of a surprise. A couple of other scenes troll modern cinematic expectations well earlier on (the accident and the knife scenes), which I thought was interesting and meta.

One of the highlights of the movie is the authenticity. The cars are classic 1950s, and there is a large slate of songs played mostly via radio that are rather corny by today's standards, but were current then and add to the immersion.

Overall, worth a watch if you're into guy movies or period pieces set in the '50s.