Good movie but grossly overrated

A Disappointing Continuation

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It's Christmas Night 1959 Baltimore. A group of friends reunite for Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg)'s marriage. Shrevie (Daniel Stern) and Beth Schreiber (Ellen Barkin) are unhappily married. Boogie (Mickey Rourke) is the slick womanizer. Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) is the prankster. Modell (Paul Reiser) and Billy (Tim Daly) round out the group. Their hangout is the Hilltop Diner.It's a very impressive cast. Everybody is terrific acting-wise. However I couldn't really get into the meandering nature of the movie. I found it hard to concentrate on any of the characters. It doesn't have the light fun of 'American Graffiti'. I would have liked a movie of them just talking in the diner about their lives.

When a movie has star quality, it must be good. For "Diner", it's Great! I mean just look at the list: Steve Guttenberg, Kevin Bacon, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern, Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin, and Paul Reiser. Set in 1959 Baltimore, the gang are enjoying the last week of the 50's. One of them is about to get married, while the others talk about different stuff that they don't care about, or just as obnoxious as the person who says it. Though in their 20's, they still act like they're younger. One plays a joke claiming the car is wrecked, in which he staged it to look like it was wrecked. The diner scenes are all to common. Debating, trading food, comparing, and other whatnot's. The one scene that got me the most is when Boogie(Rourke) unzipped his fly, and put the popcorn box in his pants while watching "A Summer Place". He freaked her out when his "member" peeked from the popcorn. He explained his situation, and she's cool about it. Other women would run for their lives. Then there was the late night jam when two of the friends decided to kick up the joint, and everyone have a great time. We all need to grow up, but who says who has to stay that way. Watch this movie, and you'll be back in your youth. 5 stars.

Barry Levinson's directorial debut, working from his own original script, is one of those movies that examines a group of friends at a significant moment in their life. Diner focuses itself on several college-aged boys in 1959 Baltimore, caught in that awkward stage right on the cusp of manhood. Each prominent member of the group is stuck at a crossroads between life as a carefree teenager and having to move into the adult world; Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg) is days away from his wedding, Shrevie Schreiber (Daniel Stern) is in a young marriage to Beth (Ellen Barkin), Boogie Sheftell (Mickey Rourke) is a playboy working at a beauty shop, Timothy Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) is a developing alcoholic living off his trust fund, and Billy Howard (Tim Daly) has just come home for Eddie's wedding.Levinson takes on a slightly non-traditional structure here, as the film occurs almost in a series of vignettes as opposed to a typical narrative. He made the wise move to get the actors acquainted with one another before shooting began, so when it came time to start rolling on the film he was able to build conversations through improvisation and the actors own relationships, as opposed to forcing them to read strict lines off the page. It has a free flow to it all, wisely directed by Levinson and marvelously acted by the young cast of fresh actors. You can feel that camaraderie in their chemistry together, you can really feel all of those years of building relationships between them.Some of the actors do shine individually; Rourke in particular steals the show, coming onto the screen as if he were a born star. He has the kind of natural charisma and compelling presence that the young Paul Newman and James Dean had, drawing your eyes towards him instantly whenever he comes on screen. There's a soft, sincere man inside that casually flamboyant shell, the kind of guy who wants you to think he's something that he really isn't, and Rourke plays it with such wonderful nuance. It's an impressive performance on it's own, but the real treat of the film is seeing the whole ensemble of young stars working together.Diner is a story of boys who have to finally make the decision to become men and I think this is an interesting part on the development of men. Over the years there have been hundreds and hundreds of films about adolescence, about boys half the age of the ones seen here, but not enough about this stage in life, one that I find infinitely more interesting. I think any man who is in this stage of their life, or has already passed it, can find a lot to relate to in these characters and the fact that I'm currently in a similar stage surely helped me admire the film even more. It takes place in 1959 but the themes of maturity and morality speak to any generation. They're all caught right in this area between boy and man and it makes for several interesting contradictions within the characters.Bacon's Fenwick is developing a severe alcohol problem and spends most of his time clowning around and pissing away his life, but we can see that he is an extremely intelligent guy who is wasting his potential. Rourke's Boogie is two thousand dollars in debt from gambling, but he still finds time to get a girl to touch his erection through a popcorn box. Guttenberg's Eddie is getting married in a week but instead of finding the courage to be a responsible man he puts all of his insecurities about taking the plunge into whether or not his fiancée can pass a silly test about football. These guys are all right on that edge and the film centers around them having to own up to where they are in their life and realize that it's time to stop being boys goofing around at the local diner and move onto becoming men.A lot of films that work with this kind of theme tend to force too much development into such a short time period, to the point where it becomes clear fiction. Levinson wisely avoids this, developing ideas that we don't see the full result of. The alcoholism of Bacon's character is an issue that comes into play for certain, but as the film closes it's still one that exists. It's still one that will impact him for years to come and we don't see the final completion of it. There's a scene early on where Shrevie and Beth go to get in their car and she stands there, waiting for him to open the door, but he doesn't do it. It's a small moment that keys into the discourse of their marriage, a discourse that is developed within the context of the film, but you know when it's over that they still have a long way to go.Levinson doesn't concern himself with trying to work these characters through their entire life in a two hour period. Instead, he foreshadows events that will come to pass later in life, realizing that this is just a small moment in the grand scheme of it all. It's a shockingly realistic and non-exaggerated approach that I found very impressively done on his part. The film opens up on Christmas of '59 and closes on New Year's Eve the same year, an appropriate time for where these men are in their life. As one decade ends, another begins and they have to evolve themselves just as the year is evolving into a new decade. It's another relatively subtle touch on Levinson's part, but it adds another nice metaphor to where these guys are at and where they are headed to.

Not much happens in the course of director Barry Levinson's film "Diner". A bunch of college-aged guys in late 1950's Baltimore gather over the Christmas holidays and eat french fries with gravy at their favorite local diner and talk about "stuff" . . . oh yeah, they also confront the painful necessity of making the transition from carefree adolescence to the responsibilities of adulthood.The reason for the gathering: Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) is getting married. TV salesman Shrevie (Daniel Stern) is already married and prefers to cling to his single friends lifestyle instead of trying to understand his wife, Beth (Ellen Barkin). Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) is the smart and cynical black sheep son of a rich family, who seems to have a drinking problem. Boogie (Mickey Rourke) is a hairstylist/law student and a smooth-talking ladies man, but his mounting gambling debts are getting him into trouble. Billy (Timothy Daley) has escaped to college and gotten involved in a messy romance with a longtime platonic girlfriend. Then there's Modell (Paul Reiser), the soft-spoken philosopher/comedian of the group, who ponders the meaning of the word "nuance" and, in the film's funniest scene, torments Eddie over a roast beef sandwich. Eddie himself is a lazy, immature-yet-amiable lout who is making his bride-to-be pass a football quiz before tying the knot. The interaction between these friends sets in motion a story that is as deep as the meaning of life, and as shallow as the question of who's the better singer - Sinatra or Mathis? "Diner" is simply one of the best movies ever made about male-bonding. Working from a highly autobiographical script, director Barry Levinson has created a masterful comedy and an insightful character study. What he does so well is capture the way guys act when women aren't around - they smoke and drink and stay up all night and laugh and talk about cars and music and sports, and of course they rack their brains trying to figure out the opposite sex. Any woman wanting to understand the male psyche would do well to study this film.More importantly he also perfectly captures the feeling of inevitable change hanging over these characters. There's this wistful desire to hang on to past relationships, to revel in familiar people and places before moving forward, before dealing with the anxiety of the approaching unknown. It's this quality that makes "Diner" such a special film. It can be enjoyed on a surface level for it's humor and nostalgia, or you can dig deeper and appreciate the profound observations it makes on the human condition. Either way it is an amazing film.