The movie is not anything close to a psychological portrait of apathetic or disillusioned youth. It is a collection of clichés confirming elder viewers in their paranoia that contact between generations is impossible. The Layne character is ludicrous - maybe the guy made a big career, but his on-screen idiocy offends common sense. The problem with the movie is that it tries to visualize, and make three-dimensional, the shallow and predictable pathos of lame journalists. A teenager strangled his girlfriend and his schoolmates did not report him right away to the police - what an outrage! how can that be! what are these monsters! Instead of really trying to explain the motivation of high school students to resist the temptation of acting as "normal adults", instead of working upon the psychology behind existing patterns of behavior among adolescents, the movie prefers poster-like types of weed-smoking, arrogant, unrestrained and utterly irresponsible degenerates who have to symbolize the "young generation" as a whole. The problem with such movies is not that they are lame - lame movies are inevitable. It is that they themselves conduce the viewers into accepting journalistic clichés and helping build an atmosphere of mistrust, suspiciousness and intolerance which instead of making situations like the one in the movie impossible further encourages them.
Review of River's Edge
