Coming-of-age films are one of the best sub-genres to earn some emotional moments and a sense of nostalgia about childhood or the teenage years. These films don't tend to have a huge story, but try to show a character arc or realization that will make them far more mature in the end. I'm stating this right now, because "Dazed and Confused" is classified as such as well as a stoner comedy, yet it completely fails at both.
Positives:
- The soundtrack. This is probably the best thing in the movie, because it feels like 99% of the budget went into the songs played. I'm not even going to bother listing all of them, since they are all regarded as some of the most beloved rock songs of that era such as "Slow Ride" by Foghat and "School's Out" by Alice Cooper. I also think the soundtrack alone brainwashes people into thinking that it's a masterpiece because of the killer songs they have.
- Some of the side characters such as the younger kids, teachers and a few sympathetic teens. They aren't perfect due to the film barely spending time on them and focusing on the more braindead characters, but at least there are enjoyable characters to be found.
- The acting is decent for a lot of starting-up roles, but it's not salvaged when we later talk about the ADR.
- The direction by Richard Linklater, the cinematography by Lee Daniel, and the production design/replication of the 1970's works at bringing the viewer back to that time period. I'm bunching all of these things up as they all accomplish at the same goal. It works at being nostalgic and somewhat realistic depiction of Austin, Texas in 1976. Linklater clearly wanted to do an homage to that decade in a guerilla-style of filmmaking as if it was made on Super 8 cameras, even if the film itself is quite awful.
Negatives:
- The premise. It's all about the last day of school and all of the teenagers and tweens want to party for the first day of summer as well as going into the next chapter of their lives. While that sounds great for the type of genre, the film acts like it too is high on weed. There's no real protagonist as it just jumps from group to group, which I will go into during the character segment. Again, this wouldn't be bad on paper for this type of movie. However, it's the execution that's the problem. First off, there's barely any character arc or journey to be found, at least in the traditional sense. A character might have a stupid choice to make or a character wants to be in a party or date someone, but there's no actual payoff or consequence for anything. The other issue is that there are so many characters in the damn movie that the film itself is constantly going back and forth in which characters to focus on. It's disorientating and causes me to have narrative whiplash.
- The tone. The film is just a teen party movie at its core where characters of ranging age or intelligence get together and get into trouble or drink. So, it should be lighthearted and immature, right? Well, kind of. The tone itself is fine, though it means that you're really not going to get anything challenging in the film (except for the film itself). However, there are concepts that are either so screwed up or have weird underlaying parallels. The teens smacking minor's asses with a cricket bat is shot and set up like they are being gang-raped. Top it off with some sexual tension between a pedophile and a teen and you got yourself a wholesome family-friendly film that no one will fully enjoy.
- The humour or the lack thereof. For being praised as a comedy classic, I didn't laugh a single time at all. The comedy boils down to either goofy antics that are more immoral than amusing or just dumb lines being spoken by drunk or high characters. There are so many funny movies out there, but this film should barely be qualified as one.
- The characters. I said before that the film has too many characters for its own good and while they do have names and even some actors attached to them, I'm just going to bunch the majority of them into one word: Cliche. For being an accurate depiction of 70's youth, the characters act more like archetypes than fully fleshed out characters. From the stoners, to the divas, to the freshmens, to the bullies, to the social outcasts, to the adolescent boys entering high school, everything about these characters are so cliche. The adults are probably the only engaging characters in the movie as they seem to be the most relatable.
- Ben Affleck and Matthew McConaughey as Fred O'Bannon and David Wooderson. For these future A-listers, these roles are just embarrassing in retrospective. O'Bannon is just a bully who gets off at smacking little boy's butts with a cricket bat. Not only is the character way too over-the-top and unrealistic, but he completely disappears by the third act, never attending the party. But the worse has to got to be McConaughey's Wooderson. You know the famous quote "alright, alright, alright"? This is the movie where it comes from and do you know when it's used? When Wooderson sees a pretty teenage girl when he's speculated to be in his late 20's. Not only is that just nasty along with another quote about high school girls staying the same age, but said teenage girl actually gets into him and talk about meeting up the next day. Like, that's just nasty. The worst thing is that the characters hang out with him because he's a cool guy to party with and he never gets called out for his pedophile antics.
- The editing by Sandra Adair. While not the worst editing in the industry, the problem is that there are far too many scenes cut early along with pointless scenes added in. This is much more prevalent in the third act where Adair clearly had no idea what to do in order to "finish" everyone's arc. The film jumps to a scene where a group of characters get caught by the police, to a thirteen year old getting laid, then back to the same group of characters being yelled at by the coach. The editing is really amateur and feels just as confused as the film's title.
- The ADR and dubbing. Jesus Christ, this has got to be one of the worst dubbing I've seen in a film that's praised so highly. It's more prevalent in scenes involving cars, but there are legit moments where the dialogue is moving faster than the actor's mouth. The character, Mitch, has by far the worst case of dubbing in the movie where his lips move once and an entire sentence comes out. It's like Linklater just did one take for each scene and didn't bother doing more, so the audio department is forced to use ADR. People and fans can say that the movie had a low budget to defend the poor ADR or whatnot, but the movie had a pretty decent budget of nearly seven million dollars. "Friday the 13th" only had a budget of half a million and the audio/dialogue editing was far more professional! So, the budget isn't to blame, but rather those that were in charge of making the dialogue natural and fluent to the actor's performance
- The "climax" of the movie. This is the most critical aspect of a coming-to-age movie and this film botches it to a new level. You know what the emotional payoff of this movie is? The character, Pink, telling his coach that he would give up his football career instead of giving up beer and weed. I'm not kidding, that's the climax of the movie. Pink's arc is barely in full attention as the film kept jumping from character to character and he didn't have much time to consider what he did is completely stupid. As for the other characters, their arcs are either just them getting a girl, getting laid or getting home after enjoying the party. The final scene is Pink and his stoner friends riding off into the sunset. Not only is it such a unsatisfying ending, but critics try to make it seem far more brilliantly. Names like Robert Ebert and Quentin Tarantino say that the movie is trying to show how stupid or bad these characters are and how they are ruining their lives by the choices they make. However, the film itself doesn't take that side of the argument. It glorifies the stupidity of the characters and their antics rather than showing the damage they did. The final shot of the movie isn't Pink or Mitch realizing what they just did might effect them in the long run, but rather embraces the care-free and rebellious attitude of the characters. Cultural disconnect or not, I simply find the ending to be a waste of my time as the whole point of a coming-to-age film is that both you and the characters learn something about themselves and life at the end. Here, it's just screw authority and party on.
"Dazed and Confused" fails at both being a coming-of-age story and a goofy stoner comedy. While the soundtrack is awesome, a few side characters are decent, the acting could be far worse, and the directing, cinematography and production design perfectly captures the era and feel of the 70's thanks to Linklaster's passion for that period. However, it's a complete lightweight in regards to quality and substance. The premise of the story is unfocused or frantic, the tone is mostly drunk or high teenage hijinks with creepy pedophiles and exaggerated bullying to boot, the comedy itself is a joke of how unfunny it is, the majority of the large cast of characters are just complete cliches for an otherwise "grounded" portrayal of the 70's, Affleck's O'Bannon is too over the top to take as a threat or fleshed-out character, McConaughey's Wooderson is a creepy pedophile and an unlikeable character the cast and film roots for, Adair's editing contains both filler additions or random transitions or cuts to scenes, the ADR and dubbing is so awful it nears the effort put in Dingo Pictures, and the ending not only feels unsatisfying or wasteful, but it fails at delivering on what makes a coming-of-age film. The film itself feels like it too got too drunk and high to resemble what good the movie could have been. If you think the coming-of-age handling or moral is on the same level as "Boyhood" or if it's as funny in an immature light as "American Pie", I think you too might be dazed and confused.
Verdict: 3/10. Really poor attempt at both a comedy and coming-of-age story. If it only it was as good as its own soundtrack...
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