Totally F***ed Up
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Movie Reviews of Totally F***ed Up
Movie Review: Totally Bored
Summary: 2 Stars
Totally [title censored for amazon consumption] Up (Gregg Araki, 1993)
What gets me about Gregg Araki's movies is that same thing that gets me about a lot of movies that the world seems to embrace with such fervor: the shallowness of the emotions therein. (Most recently, viz. Twilight.) James Duval's low-rent-Keanu-Reeves shtick is a lot of fun for, roughly, ten minutes, but the one-note delivery gets really old really quickly. That his part is written that way makes it no less tedious to watch.
Duval plays Andy, the central character of an ensemble cast that explores the gay dating scene in the early nineties. Amusingly, while Duval is the only cast member who has gone onto notable success, he's probably the actor who stands out least here; everyone else around him is more interesting and more vibrant, despite everyone affecting a world-weary attitude that Araki's script takes pains to ensure we understand they don't really feel (though the actors never really get across the subtleties inherent in playing such a role in such a way). Either the film's many thousands of fans simply ignore the emotional disconnect of the film, don't understand that an emotional disconnect exists, or both; I don't see how it's avoidable. Worse, when the movie does attempt to connect with the audience on an emotional level, it devolves into mawkishness and melodrama, especially in the painfully over-the-top climax.
To be fair, in hindsight, Araki did get better; The Doom Generation is miles better than this (and much of that has to do with Duval, whose character there actually has some sort of animation). This is worth sitting through if you were part of the scene at the time (perhaps; I was, and I didn't find it so) and/or you're a fan of The Doom Generation, to which this serves as a sort-of prequel; otherwise, it's safely avoidable. **
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