Sometimes I write reviews and I can see people reading them, cursing my words and saying that I don't know what I'm on about. I'm well aware at how well Dazed and Confused was received, getting 5/5 ratings from the majority of viewers. I guess that means I just missed something about it and it didn't work for me.
It's about the last day of school in an American High School, back in 1976. The older students are looking forward to generally beating up the younger kids (as is tradition... apparently - all I can say is that this didn't happen to me at school in Britain during the eighties and nineties and I'm glad it didn't!).
I found most of the characters either unlikeable or boring. I found it hard to root for someone who enjoys bullying people smaller than them (which is most of the older kids), just as I found it harder to identify with the younger ones who just sort of spent most of the film running away or waiting to take a hiding. Plus there's no real story. What you have here is a collection of scenes with numerous different characters all doing their own things on the last day of school. There's also too many characters. Many don't really have much impact and aren't really fleshed out enough to be believed in. I think it would have benefited with a smaller cast. Although, the cast is pretty impressive - maybe not when this movie was made, but, in retrospect, there are a fair few Hollywood A-listers all here in the younger (pre-fame) days.
However, as much as I didn't really like it, I had to give it credit for getting the 'look' of the period right on. It really could have been filmed in the seventies for the way it was presented. Plus the soundtrack was right up my street. For once a film set in the seventies didn't have a single Abba track involved and there was far more use of some 'classic rock anthems' such as Alice Cooper (hooray!).
I didn't hate it, I just didn't like it as much as everyone else apparently did.
