loser: shut up!

Loser: film starring jason biggs and mena suvari

jason biggs is awesome in this. greg kinear is always awesome, and my theory on him is that it's pretty impressive how awesome he always is because he's handsome and so he doesn't actually have to be any good but he really is always. mena suvari is pretty awesome. and, dude, the lead macpoyle from it's always sunny in philadelphia is in this, and, as always, he is extremely funny. the plot's a little free-ranging, but not bad--it's like go, but, you know, pretty good. or like the squid and the whale, but with less dialogue. and more soundtrack.

yeah. mostly what i'm objecting to is the soundtrack. not even that the songs are terrible; it's kind of funny to go back over the excesses of the mid-'90's. it's like whenever i hear whitney houston i think middle school dance, and whenever i hear the lyric "pretty fly for a white guy" i think...well, mostly, "thank god i wasn't cool enough to listen to quasi-rock in high school." because the $7.50 i might have spent back then on the PUSA c.d. containing the song with the lyric "moving to the country going to eat a lot of peaches" has instead been spent much more recently on a music for animals c.d. containing the song with the lyric "all my bare skin is black and blue i don't know how to convince[?] you." it's perhaps a fine distinction, but one i'm proud to be able to make.

it's just that the soundtrack is so RELENTLESS. there is not a moment of soundtracklessness. we slide straight through the top hits of my high school years, from garbage to *nsync to everclear and straight on 'til morning. what really got me was the segue from whatever it was to simon and garfunkel. it just doesn't stop. it's like the producer wasn't convinced that the movie would sell, so he or she let the director do what she wanted but threw at least 85% of the budget at making sure the soundtrack was insistently up to date. "sure, the movie's a little weird," said production company hoped one just post-teen would say to another, "but the soundtrack sure makes this movie worth seeing!"

yeah, it doesn't. but the movie's pretty good.

oh, oh, it's like the whackness, but less making me want to hire an entire college marching band just so that each member can slap ben kingsley across the face with his or her respective instrument.