A '90s-to-the-core existential romp through the inevitable post-collegiate blues, featuring quintessential Gen X babes Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke flirting their way through a terminally tumultuous will-they-won't-they situationship.
This irreverent look at the harsh realities of life after college captures the misadventures of Lelaina (Winona Ryder), an aspiring TV production assistant and burgeoning reality-television creator, and her relationships with her sarcastic roommate Vickie (Janeane Garofalo), friends Sammy (Steve Zahn) and Troy (Ethan Hawke), and an ambitious video executive, Michael (Ben Stiller). Reality Bites captures that nebulous period between college and the rest of your life with an endless supply of evergreen quotes about life, love, and the pursuit of gainful employment. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, smack-dab in the midst of the fest's indie filmmaking heyday, and riding high on the '70s nostalgia of the '90s, Reality Bites and its accompanying soundtrack is a comedic and cultural touchstone encapsulating Generation X's slacker/grind culture with pitch perfection. [99 min; comedy, drama; English]
"It takes a spectacular cast to pull off this kind of meandering romantic comedy, and Reality Bites couldn't have done better." — Caryn James, The New York Times
"The great thing about Reality Bites is that each of the characters comes across as real, and not some glib concoction by a screenwriter who's watched them from a cloistered distance. [Helen] Childress obviously knows their world inside out, and shares it with insight and a prickly, original wit." — Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
"A lot has changed between the generations, but Reality Bites asks a question that anyone, of any age, will find familiar: what happens when the life you were promised isn't the life you got?" — Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (UK)
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