Loser (1996)

"Dust"???
Loser brings to the screen the story of a college freshman who does not fit in well with his peers nor with the city of NY as a whole.
Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari carry out their roles well, though by no means are these their best performances.

The major setbacks are in relation to:
1) Jason Biggs not portraying his character as being a "loser," as much as an average guy. Actually, he seemed to be the only "normal" one in the movie!
2) Mena Suvari looked like she is 14 years old and a student at junior high let alone college.
3) Greg Kinnear's (annoying) character OVERDOING it in trying to be conceded and obnoxious (it's a bit much).
4) The poor choice of an actor to play "Noah" who is not all man, if you catch my drift... Any particular reason for that?
5) The other two guys were just not interesting at all nor were they good actors, and all three of them were actually quite sad as opposed to "cool."

The setting, the acting, the plot and the humor are average, while the dialogues and the script are rather weak.
In a nutshell, it's probably not a movie you would want to add to your collection, but it will provide for an evening's entertainment, and that's about it. No masterpiece here.

Mildly Entertaining- Good Chemistry Between Biggs and Suvari
Although "Loser" is a solid effort and is generally enjoyable, it was certainly not what director Amy Heckerling needed at that point in her career. After the great success of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Clueless" she pretty much went in the director dumper with this one. Ironically the problem was not her directing but her writing. Solid production could not entirely compensate for this flawed screenplay because the flaws are in the characters themselves, they are simply not believable.

This is usually fatal because it is hard for viewers to care about characters with whom they cannot identify. Fortunately for writer Heckerling, director Heckerling cast the best two actors in "American Pie", Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, as her leads. They have such unexpectedly good chemistry together that you will yourself to believe in them, even if Paul is moronically nice and Dora is moronically moronic (her failure to connect the bad relationship dots for almost the entire film is not consistent with a character who is portrayed as extremely perceptive and self-aware). Suvari looks and even sounds like Jennifer Jason Leigh which may have you flashing back to "Fast Times".

Excellent performances by Biggs, Suvari, and Greg Kinnear (as Professor Alcott) save the day or at least salvage the film. They get little assistance from anyone else in Heckerling's cast (although Dan Ackroyd is decent in a small and very straight role) as the supporting players are either neutral or less than zero. Worst of all are they guys who play Paul's three roommates. They start out as typically "Party Hard" college students but overnight morph into date rape scum and academic blackmailers. Heckerling provides nothing to explain this transformation, which is especially strange because she includes early scenes intended to show that one of the roommates is sincerely trying to help Paul with his adjustment to college in the big city.

Heckerling based her "Clueless" screenplay on Jane Austin's "Emma". Franz Kafka is her reference point for "Loser"; a strange choice given Kafka famous line "women are traps which lie in wait for men everywhere, in order to drag them down into the finite". The choice of the Dora Diamond name is an obvious homage to Kafka's girlfriend Dora Dymant. The screenplay for "Loser" is not a total loss, it has good individual lines like: "I love self-loathing complaint rock you can dance to".

Perhaps the best scene is Heckerling's homage to the Berkeley fountain scene in "The Graduate" as the dejected Paul wonders around the city while the soundtrack plays Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair". The rest of the soundtrack is also good.

Apparently Heckerling could not resist shooting herself in the foot at the very end as she included on-screen notes documenting the comeuppance received by each of the bad characters. Not only is this tired and unoriginal ("American Graffiti" and "Animal House" made use of this along with a high school film I judged last spring) but the notes themselves are not even mildly amusing.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Mildly Entertaining- Good Chemistry Between Biggs and Suvari
Although "Loser" is a solid effort and is generally enjoyable, it was certainly not what director Amy Heckerling needed at that point in her career. After the great success of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Clueless" she pretty much went in the director dumper with this one. Ironically the problem was not her directing but her writing. Solid production could not entirely compensate for this flawed screenplay because the flaws are in the characters themselves, they are simply not believable.

This is usually fatal because it is hard for viewers to care about characters with whom they cannot identify. Fortunately for writer Heckerling, director Heckerling cast the best two actors in "American Pie", Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, as her leads. They have such unexpectedly good chemistry together that you will yourself to believe in them, even if Paul is moronically nice and Dora is moronically moronic (her failure to connect the bad relationship dots for almost the entire film is not consistent with a character who is portrayed as extremely perceptive and self-aware). Suvari looks and even sounds like Jennifer Jason Leigh which may have you flashing back to "Fast Times".

Excellent performances by Biggs, Suvari, and Greg Kinnear (as Professor Alcott) save the day or at least salvage the film. They get little assistance from anyone else in Heckerling's cast (although Dan Ackroyd is decent in a small and very straight role) as the supporting players are either neutral or less than zero. Worst of all are they guys who play Paul's three roommates. They start out as typically "Party Hard" college students but overnight morph into date rape scum and academic blackmailers. Heckerling provides nothing to explain this transformation, which is especially strange because she includes early scenes intended to show that one of the roommates is sincerely trying to help Paul with his adjustment to college in the big city.

Heckerling based her "Clueless" screenplay on Jane Austin's "Emma". Franz Kafka is her reference point for "Loser"; a strange choice given Kafka famous line "women are traps which lie in wait for men everywhere, in order to drag them down into the finite". The choice of the Dora Diamond name is an obvious homage to Kafka's girlfriend Dora Dymant. The screenplay for "Loser" is not a total loss, it has good individual lines like: "I love self-loathing complaint rock you can dance to".

Perhaps the best scene is Heckerling's homage to the Berkeley fountain scene in "The Graduate" as the dejected Paul wonders around the city while the soundtrack plays Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair". The rest of the soundtrack is also good.

Apparently Heckerling could not resist shooting herself in the foot at the very end as she included on-screen notes documenting the comeuppance received by each of the bad characters. Not only is this tired and unoriginal ("American Graffiti" and "Animal House" made use of this along with a high school film I judged last spring) but the notes themselves are not even mildly amusing.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.