Dazed and Confused (Criterion)
America, 1976. The last day of school. Bongs blaze, bell-bottoms ring, and rock and roll rocks. Among the best teen films ever made, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused eavesdrops on a group of seniors-to-be and incoming freshmen. A launching pad for a number of future stars, Linklater’s first studio effort also features endlessly quotable dialogue and a blasting, stadium-ready soundtrack. Sidestepping nostalgia, Dazed and Confused is less about "the best years of our lives" than the boredom, angst, and excitement of teenagers waiting... for something to happen.
Member Reviews
Much Love For Dazed - MrsH
I love this movie! It has a fantastic soundtrack, featuring Aerosmith, Nazareth and many more classic rock favorites! It also has a solid cast, many of whom have become big, household names now. One of my favorite scenes is at the very end when everyone is just hanging out in the football field. That is seemingly what highschool is still like today, somethings change while others remain! :)Dazed and Confused - julianrjh
I'm not one of those people who saw this when it came out (I was barely ten years old when it did) but I finally saw it after I was finished high school myself, and could relate to so much of it, which I didn't expect from a movie set in the 1970s. It's definitely worthwhile, if only to see the parade of future stars in both big and small roles.Dazed and Confused - Coco
More than the cute nostalgic kick, stems and seeds included, that it might appear at first glance, Linklater’s mainstream breakthrough is a keen Altmanesque ensemble collaboration focusing on frustrated teenage integers in search of fleeting equations with which to wax jigsaw. Sex dreams about Abe Lincoln, the totem of Gilligan’s Island feminine desirability, Sunday morning coming down in a flatbead on the football field, and the genealogy of “hemp for victory” draw attention to a whole generational-intuitive counternarrative encapsulating the national project. A dropout current beneath the business-as-usual bullying and crass status jockeying that fill the day to day punching in and out of life as it has been practiced in Austin and its doubles since the baby boom broke the consumer yoke. Ben Affleck’s corporal punishment commando, so like so many in our shared memory who have ruled respective roosts, is the key foil, the little guy standing in for the big enemy and its bottom line football coach ethic. His ritual depantsing, so to speak, is a benevolent dispensation of slacker justice for the kind of kid the film prides as its accomplice. Sweet, edifying film, then, with a stance of practical, DIY resistance. A quotable lifestyle leaflet for the disaffected, not the least bit afraid of fun in its pre-prepackaged wild kingdom idiom. Too many extras not to rent immediate!
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Much Love For Dazed - MrsH
I love this movie! It has a fantastic soundtrack, featuring Aerosmith, Nazareth and many more classic rock favorites! It also has a solid cast, many of whom have become big, household names now. One of my favorite scenes is at the very end when everyone is ...Dazed and Confused - julianrjh
I'm not one of those people who saw this when it came out (I was barely ten years old when it did) but I finally saw it after I was finished high school myself, and could relate to so much of it, which I didn't expect from a movie set in the 1970s. It's definitely ...Dazed and Confused - Coco
More than the cute nostalgic kick, stems and seeds included, that it might appear at first glance, Linklater’s mainstream breakthrough is a keen Altmanesque ensemble collaboration focusing on frustrated teenage integers in search of fleeting equations with ...