Dazed and Confused review

 Number 607 on the top 1000 films of all time is Richard Lintlaker's coming-of-age drama 'Dazed and Confused.'

It is the last day of school in a high school in an unnamed Texan town. Over the course of one wild night, we see the school's students get up to mischief as they prepare for the summer holiday. The huge ensemble cast includes Jason London as quarterback Randall 'Pink' Floyd, Ben Affleck as bully Fred O'Bannion, Anthony Rapp and Adam Goldberg as intellectuals Mike Newhouse and Tony Olson and Matthew McConaughey as ageing stoner David Wooderson.

Richard Lintlaker is perhaps best-known for the excellent Before Trilogy. Similarly to Dazed and Confused, the Before Trilogy lacks a traditional storyline. In case it's an intensely character-driven story that gets really into the psychology of the characters involved. They tell a slice-of-life narrative that neglects big set pieces for the fascinating minutiae of everyday life. However, the biggest difference between the Before Trilogy and Dazed and Confused is that I actually cared about the characters in the Before Trilogy. I can't think of one semi-likeable character within the latter...or any characters I was actually rooting for.

This seems to be a common occurence when I watch coming-of-age dramas: usually the characters are obnoxious, annoying or just plain unlikeable. The Goonies, the Sandlot and the The Breakfast Club fit the bill perfectly and you can easily add Dazed and Confused to that list. The film opens with a dreadful hazing ritual where we see the older high school seniors bullying all the freshmen. It looked awful and made me really glad I never went to school in the US. 

It was also just really uncomfortable to watch especially since it seemed to be played for laughs rather than serious psychological bullying. Obviously O'Bannion and his cronies were supposed to be the villains of the piece and you're not supposed to root for them, but I really did hate them. It didn't help that Ben Affleck was as wooden as ever. 

Yet I also didn't particularly care for the kids they were bullying either. Their biggest target Mitch Kramer [Wiley Wiggins] is rescued by Pink who then takes him on a night drive to vandalise the local neighbourhood. Again not the best way to endear a character to an audience. Sure Kramer had other friends who didn't engage in that, but they weren't particularly memorable. After a while the characters all blurred into one. The same could be said for a lot of the older boys too.

The same went for all of the senior girls who engaged in the same hazing tactics as the boys although the film didn't focus as much on the freshmen. Even Tony and Mike who, I think, were supposed to be the semi-likeable characters became a bit grating after a while especially when Mike couldn't let sleeping dogs lie and got his own arse kicked.

Finally, Dazed and Confused was known for launching Matthew McConaughey's career. This was his breakout role and probably the most memorable part of the film, but even he wasn't anything that special. There was little beyond his character past the signature catchphrase 'alright, alright, alright.'

I didn't enjoy Dazed and Confused at all. It embodied everything I don't like about coming-of-age dramas: no storyline and instead a group of unrelatable, unlikeable teenager protagonists making idiots of themselves and expecting us to like them.