This was a huge disappointment if considering cast and crew involved yet one shouldn't expect much from the usual stuff from 1980's comedies.
Coming from the audacious hit "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" writer Cameron Crowe and producer Art Linson came up with this strange piece with great acting chemistry, zero laughs and zero importance. It scratches the surface of some good entertainment, mildly good scenes but doesn't sustain itself for too long with its repetitive craziness. No wonder Linson never returned to directing duties, focusing on producing classics, from "The Untouchables", "Heat" and "Fight Club" just to mention of his impressive resume.
The likes of Eric Stoltz, Chris Penn, Lea Thompson, Hart Bochner, Jenny Wright, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Randy Quaid and many others have some fun with their roles, all look comfortable and suitable for whatever this is was trying to do. A crazed and unfunny story about a group of high schoolers dealing with work, independence, failed relationships, datings, partying hard and trying to find themselves while growing up. We've seen that before and better.
For a little while it was enjoyable following those characters despite the cliches of unlucky girls dealing with irresponsible horny boyfriends, or the younger ones trying to look cool and dangerous in order to pick up girls. The latter is evidenced by the pointless antics of Mitchell Smith character as a Vietnam War buff who likes to play with danger and he never gets anything on his favor. And the whole thing with Penn's wild and imature character only gets annoying and distressing the more confusion is thrown onto others such as his girlfriend (Wright) or his roommate (Stoltz).
Is Crowe trying to show that people never change and they easily accept what comes to them? If so, the adulthood of those folks will be a terrible one.
"The Wild Life" goes way too obvious, predictable and lacking in intelligence just like the high-schoolers shown here. And for the few originalities it brings such as having a teenage dating a cop (Bochner), it doesn't convince neither entertain. But the girls were luckier in scoring something as opposed to the guys. Again, one of those stories where the moral of the story is that a decade from now they'll look back at all the mistakes they made when young and smile with nostalgic eyes. Sorry, I'm on the other side of the fence on the issue - sure you can look back with some nice memories about it, but I don't think it works all that well if people paid some prices while the messy fun was happening. It was like seeing a tame version of "Project X" (of which I hated with all of my being).
I tried hard to like this, but the laughter didn't came and the routine was shaking my head in disbelief as how weird this was. It's not a generational problem as I love many comedies from the period, the intelligent ones and even some crazed ones as well. But nothing worked in "The Wild Life". Even when there was some attempt in bringing a small drama into the scene, it failed to develop an adequate response to it. It was all too dumb and the charisma of everyone involved didn't softened the blows. Just to show how wronged this was, even the likeable Rick Moranis and his usual routine of shy/low-confident characters was totally wasted. What a mess. 4/10.
Coming from the audacious hit "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" writer Cameron Crowe and producer Art Linson came up with this strange piece with great acting chemistry, zero laughs and zero importance. It scratches the surface of some good entertainment, mildly good scenes but doesn't sustain itself for too long with its repetitive craziness. No wonder Linson never returned to directing duties, focusing on producing classics, from "The Untouchables", "Heat" and "Fight Club" just to mention of his impressive resume.
The likes of Eric Stoltz, Chris Penn, Lea Thompson, Hart Bochner, Jenny Wright, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Randy Quaid and many others have some fun with their roles, all look comfortable and suitable for whatever this is was trying to do. A crazed and unfunny story about a group of high schoolers dealing with work, independence, failed relationships, datings, partying hard and trying to find themselves while growing up. We've seen that before and better.
For a little while it was enjoyable following those characters despite the cliches of unlucky girls dealing with irresponsible horny boyfriends, or the younger ones trying to look cool and dangerous in order to pick up girls. The latter is evidenced by the pointless antics of Mitchell Smith character as a Vietnam War buff who likes to play with danger and he never gets anything on his favor. And the whole thing with Penn's wild and imature character only gets annoying and distressing the more confusion is thrown onto others such as his girlfriend (Wright) or his roommate (Stoltz).
Is Crowe trying to show that people never change and they easily accept what comes to them? If so, the adulthood of those folks will be a terrible one.
"The Wild Life" goes way too obvious, predictable and lacking in intelligence just like the high-schoolers shown here. And for the few originalities it brings such as having a teenage dating a cop (Bochner), it doesn't convince neither entertain. But the girls were luckier in scoring something as opposed to the guys. Again, one of those stories where the moral of the story is that a decade from now they'll look back at all the mistakes they made when young and smile with nostalgic eyes. Sorry, I'm on the other side of the fence on the issue - sure you can look back with some nice memories about it, but I don't think it works all that well if people paid some prices while the messy fun was happening. It was like seeing a tame version of "Project X" (of which I hated with all of my being).
I tried hard to like this, but the laughter didn't came and the routine was shaking my head in disbelief as how weird this was. It's not a generational problem as I love many comedies from the period, the intelligent ones and even some crazed ones as well. But nothing worked in "The Wild Life". Even when there was some attempt in bringing a small drama into the scene, it failed to develop an adequate response to it. It was all too dumb and the charisma of everyone involved didn't softened the blows. Just to show how wronged this was, even the likeable Rick Moranis and his usual routine of shy/low-confident characters was totally wasted. What a mess. 4/10.