Redundant and unnecessary.

Awesome Movie

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

"It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. This requires a social and political explanation. Instead of treating it as incumbent on individuals to resolve their own psychological distress, we need to ask: how has it become acceptable that so many people, and especially so many young people, are ill?" - Mark Fisher Written and directed by Michael Goldbach, "Daydream Nation" stars Kat Dennings as Caroline Wexler, a seventeen year old girl living in small-town America. With a serial killer on the loose, and industrial fires perpetually burning on the horizon, Caroline's world is quite literally both toxic and threatening.Many film-makers have tried to document the various forms of middle-class malaise oft associated with contemporary, techno-capitalism. With its toxic skies and cast of intoxicated, dysfunctional adults and children, "Daydream Nation" attempts to do the same. But Goldbach doesn't peer hard enough, doesn't dig deep enough, and the sociopolitical forces weighing down upon his characters are left entirely unexplored. Like most films of its ilk, "Daydream Nation" then posits depression, addiction, dysfunction, alienation and mental illness as a product of easily curable loneliness. A little companionship, a little sex, and you too can be fixed. That these constitute evasions at best, socially sanctioned addictions at worst, doesn't occur to Goldbach. With fine performances by Josh Lucas and Andie MacDowell.6/10 - See "Red Desert", Todd Haynes' "Safe" and "The Devil Probably".

Daydream Nation is a flawed,but entertaining well made Coming of Age film filled with great performances and great direction that is dramatic and sometimes darkly funny. The film is described as Juno meets Donnie Darko and while Daydream isn't as memorable as those two films Daydream Nation is a fine film in it's own right.Daydream Nation tells the tale of a big city teenage girl named Caroline Wexler(Kat Dennings) who has moved with her father to a small town. Feeling like she can't relate to her fellow students Caroline becomes friends and has an affair with her teacher Barry Anderson(Josh Lucas). Trying to cover-up the affair,Caroline begins seeing and falling for fellow student Thurston Goldberg(Resse Thompson)which starts a love triangle. While that is going on there is a serial killer around town killing young girls and a series of events that will effects the main characters and the small town's people.I love Coming Of Age films because good Coming Of Age films depict the hardships and confusion of growing up and it can be funny or very dramatic and Daydream Nation is a film that truly fits in the Coming Of Age genre. Daydream Nation is a wonderful film from beginning to end because of the characters and the way it depicts small town life. The characters whether it's Caroline,Thurston,Barry or other characters are flawed human beings who are unsure of themselves because of strange behavior,tragic events or actions,whether it's dealing with death,past events or characters in their present life. Like any good Coming of Age film,the movie wonderfully shows the main character growing up and having to deal with life as a teenager. Caroline is new in the small town and trying to find herself in her new surroundings and while at times Caroline seems so sure of herself,she is just as confused as the other characters in the film. What I also like about the film is that the character Caroline isn't a one-note character with no emotion and that at times you can see that she has some moments and feelings of guilt and sadness over what she's doing in the film and you can feel her heartache and growth that Caroline goes through in the film. You may not always like the main characters because of the way they are and their actions but you will relate to most of the characters because they are flawed. The film's screenplay by Michael Goldbach(who also directed) is well-written giving the characters sharp dialog,great lines and scenes. I love how the small town and it's people are shown. The small town depicted in Daydream Nation is shown in a dark,surreal and at times funny way showing the town that's surrounded with a cloud of smoke,huge trees and weather that makes the town look like a dream. The small town in Daydream Nation at times feels like it could have taken place in any small town in the United States but only this time small town life is distorted and offbeat and where everything is really strange and weird almost like if the film Blue Velvet was like a Coming Of Age film. Small town life in Daydream Nation can be really wild and sometimes crazy but and the same time the small town in DN can have a beautiful scenery that is sadly swept underneath thanks to the darkly humorous and strange underbelly with the film's characters. The small town teenagers are so bored out of their minds the only things they do is get high,have parties and have sex and it's told in a humorous and sometimes sad way,while little children play around not to have a good time,but to past the time. For the teenagers and kids they're no social clubs,playgrounds or even video games or computers it's just lots of trees,cloud smoke and use of drugs. The adults in the film are lonely people who have no idea what their children are doing and raising theirs kids in single parent households living in a very grim and depressing small town life and are just as lost and as confused as their kids are. The film is David Lynch-lite. The only flaw with the film is that there are too many subplots in the movie which are good and interesting,but not developed enough. The ending of the film is truly beautiful and strange and is a great conclusion that caps off the film and tells you what happens to most of the characters.The cast does great jobs in their roles. I am a huge Kat Dennings fan and she does a great and excellent job as Caroline bringing the same depth,beauty,smarts and sarcasm she brings to her other roles. I have seen nearly all of Kat Dennings films and I will watch anything she's in. Resse Thompson does a great job as Thurston,Caroline's other love interest playing a weird awkward teenager well. Josh Lucas does a wonderful job as Barry Caroline's teacher and love interest. Andie Macdowell does good job as Thurston's mom Enid Goldberg. The rest of the cast including Rachel Blanchard(Ms. Budge),Ted Whittall(Mr. Wexler),Katie Boland(Jenny),Landon Liboiron(Paul),Natasha Cails(Lily Goldberg)and Quinn Lord(Thomas) also do great jobs as well.Michael Goldbach does a fine job directing the film giving the film a beautiful,unique and surreal visual style to the film using different colors in the film. Good direction,Goldbach.The score by Ohad Benchetrit is well-done and effective and adds to the dark,surreal feel of the film. Good score.In final word,Daydream Nation is a flawed,but entertaining film thanks to the performances from Kat Dennings and the rest of the cast and the direction of the film and you can watch the movie based on the performances and direction. Highly Recommended. 9.5/10.

This one just happened to appear on Showtime today. I started to watch it and about 15 minutes in I said "ok I will record this and watch it later." I kept watching and at about 30 minutes in I was still watching. I kept watching more and more of it and saying I would watch it later. Pretty soon the whole 1 and 3/4 hours went by and I found myself unable to tear myself away. It was impossible to stop. I was hypnotized.I usually don't find much to like about movies these days. They are violent, loud, juvenile, predictable and boring. Finally one that has real characters, in real situations, with real thoughts and feelings. The characters are mature and well drawn with depth and the kind of complexity that says volumes about the observational skills of the writer. It was sensitively directed and acted. And you know what the best thing about it was? At any moment in the film I had no idea where it was going. I have seen thousands of films and I can spot a cliché a mile away. This one was like no other film I have ever seen. Totally unpredictable.Do whatever you have to do to see it. Treat yourself to something different then you can go back to films with drugs, car crashes, guns, and urban horror stories. Just give yourself one chance to see a really well crafted and mature work of art.

Writer/director Michael Goldbach throws a whole lot of stuff against the wall in Daydream Nation and quite a bit of it sticks. He also demonstrates the unstated problem with that old idiom. Who wants a wall with a bunch of random stuff stuck to it? There are parts of this film that are funny and parts that flirt with meaning and parts that brush up against truthful insight. None of it adds up to anything, however, and other parts of the movie are either pointless or disappointing. It's not a bad way to kill 98 minutes but it's nothing that will stick with you after that 98th minute is over.Caroline Wexler (Kat Dennings) is the star and narrator of the show. She's a high school girl who's widowed father has dragged her from the big city to a small town, although that's one of the biggest bits of stuff that doesn't stick to the wall. I grew up in a small town. Well, I grew up on a farm outside a small town. I went to a high school that took the students from two small towns. Neither town had its own movie theater and my graduating class had about 40 kids in it. THAT'S a small town. The setting of Daydream Nation is only "small" from the perspective of someone from New York or Chicago. Caroline's classmates have easy access to seemingly any narcotic they want and she has to pass through a metal detector to get to class. Hardly the trappings of a naïve or sheltered existence, yet a great deal of this tale is based on Caroline being so much more worldly and jaded than everyone else her age. It's a false note and it's not the only one that sounds in the otherwise entertaining tune of this motion picture.At the core of Daydream Nation is Caroline seducing her English teacher Mr. Anderson (Josh Lucas) while gradually succumbing herself to the awkward charms of her stoner classmate Thurston Goldberg (Reece Thompson). There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of periphery jazz orbiting around that love triangle, including the first crush of Thurston's little sister, the fall-rise-and-fall again of one of Thurston's stoner buddies, an abortive relationship between Caroline's dad and Thurston's mom, a guileless high school girl whom writer/director Goldbach uses as a target for his disdain and anger for people who aren't like himself, an anti-drunk driving PSA an industrial fire and a white-suited serial killer. Some of it's amusing and some of it just clutters up the place, but it's Anderson-Caroline-Thurston that is the heart of this movie.Two-thirds of it beats quite nicely. Caroline is a wonderfully written young woman who's at that point in adolescence where she can't distinguish between who she really is and the act she puts on for everyone else. She's smart, but not as smart as she thinks. She's sarcastic, but not as bitter as she thinks. She thinks she's mature, but it's mostly a girl's concept of maturity. Thurston is a dead on avatar of teenage male cluelessness and unfocused drive. He knows he wants to be with Caroline but hasn't the slightest idea how to achieve it, only that he's not going to let her pretenses at sophistication put him off the trail.Anderson, though, has an irregular rhythm. He starts out just as smartly drawn as the other two. His reaction to Caroline's advances is exactly the way you'd hope a grown man would respond. He knows what she's doing and is more bemused by her audacity than titillated by the prospect of young flesh. In their early scenes together, she's pretending to be grown up while he really is. When they do fall into bed, it's easy to forgive because Kat Dennings is pretty hot, she doesn't really look that young and Josh Lucas doesn't really look that old. Then Anderson has Caroline read his 70 page novel, which is autobiographical, and he reveals himself to be a pathetic failure consumed with neurotic angst. But that's not at all whom the character is in the beginning and his transformation isn't gradual or observable by the audience. He's one kind of person. She reads his novella. He becomes a completely different kind of person. There's no reality to Anderson for the second half of the film. He's becomes another receptacle of Goldbach's contempt of "small" towns and the "small" people in them.If that sort of rage and disgust had permeated the whole film, perhaps it would have given Daydream Nation a unifying theme and tied it all together, rather than letting much of it flail about. Instead, the tone and tenor of most of the movie is gauzy and cushiony. The best thing about it is the accuracy of its emotion and behavior, but Goldbach is always pulling back and keeping an ironic/disengaged distance from it all. It's a motion picture about the messiness of life that keeps everything too neat and tidy.I'd give it 6 stars out of 10 for the performances of Kat Dennings and Reece Thompson and for offering up a relatively dense narrative. There are enough things that clang wrong here to prevent anything higher than that.