Again we have a film that admits there is a class structure to America. College age 20-somethings are shown working minimum wage jobs out of necessity, in a suburb where parents are failing to maintain their middle class homes.
A "coming of age dramedy" and a naturalistic look at white boy life circa 1987, the film tries to share focus with a girl and a guy, but is mostly about the guy - with a useless english lit degree and a demoted father who pulls the plug in his hopes of a summer in europe.
However, I have two bones to pick with the film: the sound mix and the final stages applied to the cinematography. I'm not sure what the budget was, but it had to be more than ten million just from a cursory look at the credits. The film was finished using a "digital intermediate," which means the whole film was transferred to a computer for color timing and tinting, etc and then back to film for the release prints. It may have been employed for some specific purpose, such as if the film was shot in winter to give a summer look to brown leaves on trees, or some such but the end effect was to make all the best close-ups seem fuzzy and lower in contrast than they might have been.
And, the bigger sin is that great songs like Bastards Of Young by the Replacements are mixed so low as to be almost invisible in the soundtrack. Someone needs to be led out back and shot for burying tunes like this- and the sad part is they aren't really even "buried in the mix," they are just played quietly while nothing else is going on...
Obviously I'm biased - this film is right up my alley and could be the story of my life so I'm hyper critical, but I am curious what others thought about this film. It sort of poses the question, if DAZED AND CONFUSED were released today, would it be a hit or a miss?
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