Purely Joyful Movie!

Pretty Good

Absolutely amazing

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Sometimes "reality is more twisted than dreams" states the male protagonist of this motion picture in which strange and cataclysmic things start happening to two young lovers after they pick up a slightly deranged drifter. The film almost defies description, but is perhaps best thought of as something that Joseph Minion ('After Hours'; 'Motorama') might write after watching 'Southland Tales' with the trio encountering increasingly weird and unhinged individuals on an increasingly apocalyptic journey, at least half of whom seem to mistake the female protagonist as someone from their past. The price $6.66 keeps recurring too, and the way the drifter constantly seems on the cusp of seducing both the young lovers, there is room to wonder if he is meant to be some sort of demon or devil or something else. Writer-director Gregg Araki provides no clear-cut answers though, and unlike his latter equally weird and apocalyptic 'Nowhere', this earlier effort does not benefit so much from the ambiguity since it is less of a character study than 'Nowhere'. As pure entertainment though, 'The Doom Generation' works much better with so much unadulterated weirdness in the mix that there is never a boring moment be had. James Duval's final scene is unforgettable too, with strobe lighting effects enhancing the pure horror of it. The film offers a refreshingly different take on teen romance with characters who debate the fact that "I love you" can mean different things and whose running away together proves anything but romantic in a traditional sense.

Araki has now plummeted into an abyss of frustration with his pics, where his best one, Mysterious Skin brought him back up. This movie mess is too crazy to be taken seriously. The three performers perform, notably the hate driven female, with a soft side. Her and her best friend (Duvall) pick up sexy hitchhiker, Schaech, and what begins is a crazed journey of debauchery, and violence which escalates into a sickeningly shocking and memorably scene of violence in it's finale, leaving one less traveler. Yes the movie is entertaining as f..k, with a few instances (666 and "I'll find her and her kill her") plus a cameo by Christopher Knight, aka: Peter Brady and Lauren Tewes from The Love Boat as news anchors. The dialogue is juicy and originally cutting and informative, one line of dialogue, referring to Dickie Gere's butthole. The last scene and dreary ending song, has always stayed with me, prefore a experimental film of madness, which Araki shows you again, how the gay are wronged, and the independence of their characters living in a world of angst. They suffer insult, day to day, but paying no heed to those ignoramas's out there, where of course this subject is always gonna be frowned upon. Of course, compared to his other two films before hand, this one has much little reference to it. And what points he's trying to get through in this film, have got lost in this mire of a film, yet carried well by it's three mains.

This is one of those great, special movies that came from the 90's wasteland. The script is insane, the cast are sexy, and it just feels like the perfect slice of late 90's desolation.If you're not into edgy, confronting subject matter, It's definitely not for you, but i like my films a little bit dangerous and out of control, and that's exactly what The Doom Generation is; out of control.Sure, there are plot points that don't quite fit, but they don't have to. The movie perfectly complements the emotional landscape of the characters. It's crazy, over sexed self absorbed angst with a side serving of nihilism. Accept it for what it is and enjoy it. Not enough films take the risks they used to, and i applaud The Doom Generation for being what it needs to be, the same way Natural Born Killers did.

The Doom Generation is a stunning, gripping, gut-wrenching movie. It's easy to see why reactions are so strongly polarized, with almost everybody either loving it or hating it. It's scary to imagine what kind of mind would react with genuine indifference.I admit I didn't read all the reviews already posted for it, but in the ones I did read I was surprised to find so few that mentioned how funny and how charming this movie is. Like it or not, it's primarily a romantic comedy, and if you miss that you've missed what holds it all together. It's extremely intelligent, very dark, very sweet, profoundly erotic, and shockingly bloody. But most of all it's very, very funny. If I'd missed the humor, I'd still like the freewheeling sexiness, but I'd be appalled by the violence. But I didn't miss the humor, so I loved it all.Everything about it is brilliant: the writing, the direction, even the gory special effects, and every single member of the large cast is perfect, especially the three leads. For a "heterosexual" movie, as Araki labeled it (with some irony, I have to think), with plenty of sex between the girl and both guys, the most powerfully erotic scenes are between the two men alone. There's no sex acted out between them at all, not even a kiss, but the heat is intense and stunning, much more powerful than the explicit sex between either of them and the girl. It's the best proof I've ever seen that eroticism and sex are completely different, and in a movie eroticism is much more entertaining. The sex acts in this movie may be all hetero, but the real heat is as gay as it gets. That's quite a coup.I for one am glad it's not in widescreen on the DVD. If a movie that's filmed widescreen is shown at 4:3, you do lose information. But a lot of independent movies from that period were filmed at 4:3, so that a "widescreen" version just crops off the top and bottom of the picture, and you actually get less information. (The widescreen version of Gus Van Sant's brilliant Elephant is like that, but fortunately that DVD includes both versions.)