Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Too much of everything

Don't listen to the negative reviews

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

When I saw "SLC punk!" for the first time I was surprised, a lot... I saw the trailer and I thought "oh cool another movie about punk, drugs and subculture" but boy was I wrong. Instead of the shallow movie for just entertainment purposes that I expected I got a true masterpiece that would haunt my thoughts for weeks. The intense scenes, the whole irony behind the characters, the realism of the script together with amazing acting (another surprise, Lillards acting) made this movie for me seriously life changing! After finishing the film tons of question are born inside your head about, you, the world, society. In conclusion a very straight forward film with deep meaning!

I don't think people really understand why I love this movie. It's because not only does it have an all around great cast, story, and soundtrack, but it speaks to me. It made me think about my future, and how I too will change as time goes on. I learn so much about not only the punk fad of the 70's and 80's, but I also see the bonding of two long time friends, what it means to be a punk, and how who you were anywhere from a couple of years ago, to just yesterday, has changed. This is really the first coming of age film I've seen where it tackles how hard it is to be different in a society that just wants you to be "normal" if there is such a word, and that you will find who you really are comfortable with at any point in your life. That is why I love this film as much as I do.

Skeptical was my first impression of this movie. It seemed as though it would just focus on a bunch of punks and how cool their way of life is. That's not wrong, but it's also not right. This is portrayed throughout most of the movie, but later on, Matthew Lillard's character changes and begins to think about who he is. It served as a great character development, but this is just one of the few great parts about the movie. In the ending, it was shown how talented he can be in a dramatic role. It's hard to see why he isn't in more roles like that. The comedy is lacking and that is what it was labeled under, so it was unimpressive in that factor. It had few chuckle moments. The style is also unimpressive. The pans and cuts are sometimes choppy and the story telling was sketchy at times. Most performances were up to par given the material, but there were still a few missing links. It's a nice, independent movie that can be enjoyed if the lacking parts are dismissed.

On initially watching this movie I wanted to give it a higher rating, because all in all it was fast-paced and entertaining. The dialog was good enough and there was plenty of humor and action. One stylistic criticism is that Stevo's voice-over was poorly utilized. In movies where the method works, such as Fight Club and A Clockwork Orange, the voice-over was used moderately so as to represent the narrator's perspective through comments where it would otherwise be unclear rather than summarize things that could have been shown instead of told or were already happening on screen. Overall, it seemed to be a low-budget attempt to emulate Trainspotting's style.On further reflection, however, it's clear that this movie is geared towards 90's hipsters who don't know anything about punk rock and only recognize it for its fashionistas and punk bands that were slow and poppy enough to make it to the mainstream. Disappointingly, there seemed to be more classical music in its soundtrack than genuine 80's hardcore songs. Despite Stevo's railings against 'posers,' he and his friends seemed to be trying too hard with their image to take any of his 'anarchist' rhetoric seriously. Nor is anarchism even close to being the only ideology which identifies with punk. Contrary to this movie's attempt to portray punks as being to the 80's what hippies were to the 60's, the genre is far too diverse and divergent to make the point stick. Along with druggies there were straight edgers, along with anarchists there were fascists, and along with all of them there were people who just didn't care one way or the other. SLC Punk attempted to use broad generalizations to display a small subsection within punk rock as being wholly representative for its target audience of outsiders. Within 80's hardcore, a shaved head, plain tee, and boots were far more common than a blue mohawk with tight leather pants. SLC Punk never truly felt as though it was about the music or even the broader social scene so much as it was about a specific character, his specific problems, and his specific viewpoint. The amorphous plot had been satisfactory until its ending, which had conclusions which were too black-and-white and didn't translate smoothly enough from the protagonist to his broader social situation. This could have been forgiven however, if not for the display of some of the most horrible and clichéd acting I've seen within memory from the two kids playing the flashback versions of Stevo and Bob. The amateurishness and total lack of quality in this scene speaks for itself. I would only recommend this movie to someone with nothing else to do and who can take its portrayal of punk with more than a grain of salt.