Review: Dazed and Confused

       High school is a different experience for everyone. For some, it is the high point of their lives, a time when they feel like kings ruling over their domain. For others, it's a difficult time filled with awkwardness and agony. Regardless of what you're high school experience is, most people look back on it fondly with a nostalgia that block out most of the more painful moments. It's a time where we come of age, discover who we are, and step into adulthood. This is a truth understood in Dazed and Confused, where we follow different high schoolers on the last day of class and the long night that follows. Each of the characters appears to be having a great time, drinking beer and smoking weed, hanging out at various local establishments, but many of them are to focused on the various small problems in their life to truly enjoy themselves.

        This movie is pretty light in terms of plot. There are many characters in this movie and the movie gives roughly equal time to all them. We focus on one group of characters for a bit and then move on to the next, eventually looping back around to the people we started with and slowly we see how the stories intertwine. It's the last day of school before summer break 1976 and people are unwinding in different ways. The freshly minted seniors hunt down the incoming freshman to paddle them in a rite of passage ritual. The football players must make a choice about signing an agreement that they will abstain from drugs and alcohol during the coming season. There's lots of pot smoking, underage drinking, couples making out, and fights breaking out. The movie's most memorable character is Wooderson played by Matthew McConaughey. Wooderson has graduated from high school a few years ago and is now in his twenties, but he hangs out with 17 year olds in order to cling to his glory days. We the audience see him as pathetic, but most of the cast of the movie see him as sort of an idol, the cool guy who can buy them beer.

       I was surprised by the poignancy of this movie. I was expecting a typical dumb stoner comedy, but the movie has heart and a message it is trying to convey. It's art mixed with anthropology, studying the different types of people and experiences that are found in high school. I was also surprised to see so many big name stars in this movie. I knew McConaughey was in this, but I didn't expect to see Milla Jovovich, Adam Goldberg, Ben Affleck, and Parker Posey in this film. The acting on the whole is good, McConaughey is the standout, but largely I suspect because he is not acting. I believe that Wooderson behaves just like McConaughey does in real life. This is a good movie, a surprising movie. I would recommend this to anyone beginning high school, or in high school right now, but it probably wouldn't be too appreciated at a high school reunion.