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everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Absolutely brilliant

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

It's the suburban neighborhood of Burnfield in Austin, Texas. Slackers hang out behind the convenience store that is operated by the Choudhurys. Jeff (Giovanni Ribisi) is dating Sooze (Amie Carey). She wants to go to NYC to do alternative art but he refuses to do anything. Jokester Buff (Steve Zahn) works at the pizza joint. Tim (Nicky Katt) is ex-military with anger issues. Bee-Bee (Dina Spybey-Waters) is Sooze's friend. They come looking for Pony who was Jeff's friend and is now famous. A confrontation with the Choudhurys scatters the group. Pony (Jayce Bartok) shows up with publicist Erica (Parker Posey) and find the group. Jeff holds some resentment as he has a different memory of the start of Pony's band.It's one rambling night in the burbs written by Eric Bogosian and directed by Richard Linklater. It has some good actors. For some reason, I keep thinking of 'Waiting for Guffman'. In that movie, Guffman is a red herring and it works better. This movie turns aimless after Pony arrives. He's the goal and the movie loses its emphasis. The movie would be much better to climax with his arrival and end with a complete blowout with Jeff in that parking lot. The last half loses all the tension for me. The movie is 2 hours and could easily lose some of the second half.

Ah, the suburbs. That wasteland to which white people move so that they don't have to live around ethnic folks. It's hard to tell whether movies usually idealize the suburbs or trash them, but "SubUrbia" certainly does the latter. Portraying several people's empty lives in an unidentified suburban land - although I assumed that it was LA; it was plastic enough to be LA - they pull no punches here. One of the aspects is that you can see how they treat the one ethnic person (Ajay Naidu). But what can you say about the suburbs (except maybe that they're a hell on Earth)? Anyway, Richard Linklater was showing some of the skills that he later brought to "Waking Life". This is a movie worth seeing. Also starring Nicky Katt, Parker Posey, Giovanni Ribisi and Steve Zahn.

If "Dazed and Confused" was the 'high' then "SubUrbia" if most definitely the 'down'. It's basically the flipside of "Dazed and Confused", where youthful hedonism has been replaced by 20-something boredom. It's a post-college movie where characters have found themselves unfulfilled in every capacity. It's a pack mentality, where you hang-out with the same gang from high school only to find you've out grown each other and resent one another's ambitions because you know you yourself lack the impetus to do anything constructive with your life. These characters are losers in every respect, clinging on to their high school way of life, reluctant to take initiative and move on. They constantly put each other down, bicker and make efforts to humiliate, yet the depressing thing is they have no one but each other. This is a quality film that remains one of Linklater's most under appreciated efforts. No one has the ability to present young characters with the insight, skill and craft Lanklater possesses. He is truly one of America's finest filmmakers working today and "SubUrbia" is a great film that still holds up.

No one else seemed to mention it, so here goes:"SubUrbia" is "The Wizard of Oz" for slackers (underemployed post-high school young Americans)Buff is the Scarecrow (he lacks a brain)Tim is the Lion (he lacks courage)Jeff? is the Tin Man (he lacks a heart)Sooze is Dorothy and Bee-Bee is TotoThe Wizard of Oz is Pony and his publicist, Erica, is a bit of a witch.Obviously, "SubUrbia" is a comic-tragedy (black comedy), but the question is: do the main characters gain the brain, courage and heart that they lack at the beginning of the film? I think so:Tim and Sooze will move to New York (she's seen through Pony's smoke and mirrors). Brainless Buff seems smarter and clearer at the very end of the film. Tim's heart is awakened when he picks up dead Bee-Bee on the roof of the convenience store.mmorse-2