Summary
The first day of summer. The jocks, cheerleaders, geeks, stoners and all the rest are turning out to show the incoming freshman what high school is all about. Hazing, partying, making friends, and discovering who you are.
A Very Special Episode
One of the things I find I am often doing is trying to catch up on all the cult classics that I missed out on because I was just a little too young or because I had pretty on top of it parents who didn’t let me watch whatever I wanted to. “Dazed and Confused” certainly falls into that category so when I saw that
This film is definitely one of the better stoner comedies out there. The main reason, I think, is that it doesn’t try and come up with some big over arching plot. Don’t get me wrong. Going to White Castle, trying to by beer for the first time, or losing your virginity by midnight are all great fodder for awkward teen hijinks and hilarity, but they also are a little un-relatable for the average person.
“Dazed and Confused” sets itself apart by not being about anyone trying to accomplish any really big specific thing.
It’s just about the first day of summer in a small town.
This is where film is really special. Instead of getting 1 1/2 hours with a couple of kids, we get that time with all of the kids. We get to see kids from every age and walk of clique. It may not seem like a huge deal, but this change to the teenager comedy makes all the difference.
Nostalgia
Nostalgia is a funny thing and to not talk about nostalgia when discussing this movie is a big mistake. This movie is dripping with it. It makes me nostalgic for the 70s and I wasn’t even alive back then, let alone in high school. Nostalgia paints and repaints our memories as we revisit them, heightening all of the extreme experience we have and making us forget all of the mundane in betweens.
We forget what high school was really like and instead only remember the stories we’ve told a million times. We forget the daily drudge of home work, unless it was a traumatic experience, and think instead of the time we kicked the other team’s butt in football. Our memory, while it is all we have to go on, is faulty at best.
The Film
The most enjoyable aspect of this movie to me is not the hilarious jokes and circumstances, the recognizable faces showing up, the awesome soundtrack, or that the bully gets his comeuppance in the end. It is that this film pokes my nostalgic brain all the way through. In every scene there are characters who represent me and my friends from back then and makes me remember,
For example, in the film one of the recurring theme is that of the upper class men hazing the freshmen. Now I never went through any hazing per se, but these scenes did cause me to think about all of the ways I have seen those emotions played out in my own life. The times I was bullied, the times I bullied, the times I ended up friends with my bully, the times I got back at my bully, and the times that it all just happened and was never talked about again.
There is no group left out in the cold in this movie. You see that every group, the jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, underclassmen, stoners, drinkers, and partyers all had people in them who were both good and bad. Just like you probably knew that one jock who was a super cool dude even though he hung out with grade A jerks and even the chess team had a guy that everyone couldn’t stand because they were too full of themselves.
This movie doesn’t just take a single point of view. It allows you see every situation from every angle. As a result you end up seeing a scene from every perspective in it and relating it to every perspective you might have had in a similar scene to this one when you were in high school.
Verdict
This is a film that lets you re-experience high school for all its best and worst qualities. I suppose if you are some one for whom high school was not all-in-all an ‘ok’ experience, then maybe this movie won’t be a great ride down nostalgia lane. It might end up triggering some bad memories.
But for most people who just see high school as a time that had its ups and downs but mostly ups, “Dazed and Confused” will be a great time.
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