I am a twenty year old male who was born and raised in the suburbs and I can honestly say that this movie summed up a lot of the feelings I have about life right now... It was also kind of a wake up call. I can honestly say that no other teen/young adult movie has affected me like this one, and I have seen everything from kids to requiem for a dream.
sharethe was what most people did just hang out mabey it told you that you really didnt do anything with your life just like them untill the end that is
shareI was 23 when that movie came to theatres and remembered feeling that way in the early 90s when I was in high school. I felt the aimlessness & the bitterness that Giovanni & Nicky's characters felt for awhile during & a few years after high school. I didn't know what I wanted. I just knew I needed to get out of the stale town I grew up in to that point (age 20-1993). To get my release I traveled some and found work along the way and met many cool friends. I got a steady job down in Yosemite, then up to Tahoe to work at a casino then down to Vegas-basically just started working after high school and living life away from "home base" for 5 years. Then came back home in '98 feeling refreshed again. I could be any kid in any town in America. My suggestion would be to travel and find work away from where you grew up and maybe in 5 years or so come back full circle feeling richer from your experiences away from "home". It sure beats wasting your life hanging out by the nearby gas station or convience store moping about how life is dragging you down.
Master card player? Resort casino owner?? or SS car enthusiast??? Make your best guess.
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Well, in a nutshell: "When life gets too stale for you-get out of town for awhile."
Master card player? Resort casino owner?? or SS car enthusiast??? Make your best guess.
Thank you for sharing your personal story; I can relate. It's 2014 now and I'm also a 23 cynical individual with a near worthless college degree who's doing nothing right now. Thank God I've stopped hanging out with the fools who just get high and drunk in their garage. Now I just need to make some decisions, pack up and haul ass out of my town.
shareI'm 17, and already feel the way the characters do in this film.
"Who knows where thoughts come from? They just appear!" - Lucas, Empire Records
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This moive was funny at Best, All I could really see it doing to a person is making them want to do something with their life instead of being a lazy *beep*
shareKIDS was way too over the top to really affect me. Granted, it was a good movie, but this film seemed more real (meaning that it was something that I could relate to more than the excessive drug abuse and sexual promiscuity that was in KIDS). I could relate to the feelings of hopelessness and apathy that the characters felt in this film. And, also, I could relate to the general boredom of growing up in the Suburbs where, most of the time, there isn't anything to do other than to hang out at shopping malls/convenience stores/whatever.
shareI agree with the statement about kids. Yes this movie is about people slacking around, yes it represents a feeling of helplessness that many feel. But that'exactly the point. Did you ever shoot heroin? I didn't. Some people do, but not everyone's life has is like Requiem for a dream.
I think that the movie does what it's supposed to do : it stimulates your thought process. If you're at a point where you feel like this movie shows your life (i certainly did), it's a good wake up call to tell you that suburbs breed apathy.
Yes Jeff is the protagonist, and he is the good guy, but it's not all black and white. I like his line "my work does not define what I am". He has a point, but he could do more. He "wrote a few short stories", but he doesn't have a center or a goal. He still has work to do, pull himself out of the tar pit of stupidy, and find something that he does think is worth working on. Which is what a lot of us miss in the early 20s, when we realize that we won't have school to rebel against for the rest of our lives.
"The answer to that question lies in another question. What is the most common characteristic in all humans, fear, or lazyness?"
They shouldn't have called the movie KIDS, they should have called it PUNKS. That's all they were and the movie sucked. So did the ending of Suburbia. I just watched it a couple of hours ago and when it abruptly ended, i remember thinking, "what? That's it?" Two hours of meaningless rambling for that? Very dissapointing.
shareI'm 29 and growing up was kinda like an exact mix of Kids and Suburbia...
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I think you really have to get this movie to truly understand it. For what it is and what it captures. And I think a lot of it has to do with the times. But I mean it could have been made in 1986 and worked the exact same way. Just with different cloths and music.
I knew people exactly like this. I guess I just can really relate. At the end of this movie, I really felt like I went back in time. Never has a movie done that to me, so accurately. This movie really left me with a feeling.
“Clowns never laughed before, beanstalks never grew, ponies never ran before, ‘til I met you.”
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Another thing I would like to add... is that I saw this film last summer when I was practically at the same point in my life as Jeff was in the movie... I was fighting with my girlfriend (now ex of six months) all of the time. I felt the same feelings of hopelessness, not knowing what I wanted to do with my life, ect. And I caught this film on TV really late one night and it blew me away.
The characters of Jeff and Tim epitomized the very way I looked at the world. Like I said, I've seen everything from Kids to Requiem for a Dream and no other film has registered with me on such a personal level. This movie really taught me that you have to take personal responsibility for your own life... that only YOU can find a place to fit into in this world, which is what I am trying to do now. Sorry if I sound like a self-help book; I just thought I would share the impact that this obscure little film has had on me.
Suburbia definitely deeply affected me. It's probably the most realistic dialogue I've ever heard in a fictional movie.
The thing that affected me most was that when it was over I was left just as confused, if not more so than before it started. There were no answers, and no solutions to any of their problems. I think we all can relate to Jeff most and see his ideas or thoughts as valid, and yet he really comes to no conclusion. He is almost an anarchist who doesn't have the will power to become one because he is just stuck ranting about all of it and taking no actions. I wish I could be like Buff and just shut off the depressing parts of my mind and just have a good time... but Buff's an idiot. I almost feel sorry for Jeff because he is not surrounded by a stimulating environment at all. If he could spend time with smarter people maybe his point of view wouldn't be so nihilistic. And yet he can't leave these people because they are friends and stuck in their habitual daily routines.
The only part that seemed to have an answer for their problems was Jeff's "getting naked" speech that if none of matters anyway, then he can go to New York with Sooze because you can't plan your life, you just take it as it goes.
Though I do like his idea of "breaking new ground" by doing nothing.
It's all just very confusing, hypocritical, contrasting points of views, endless cycles and apathetic that after seeing Suburbia it just flustered me. I wish I had an answer.
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Xander:
Yeah, I was left with a similar feeling after watching this film. This is an incredibly powerful film because there are no real answers, just like in real life.... There are no clear answers or solutions to anything.... To me, the "getting naked speech" was Jeff's last and final attempt to change around the course of his life and, of course, to save his already dead and gone relationship with his girlfriend. Once he confronts her with the notion of wanting to change it is already too late. She had already decided to leave him for Pony, so he just reverts back to his nihilistic/apathetic *beep* them all attitude.... And can you really blame him? Really, there was no one worth looking up to in this film.... besides maybe the foreign convenience store clerk, but in a way he was just a spectator trying to make sense out of the whole mess. However, he is so far removed from the situation that he is incapable of truly understanding exactly "why" they take everything for granted. I really believe it is because they were raised in that environment.... why would they believe in busting their a** if they have seen the other side of the American dream and have lived it already?
Angel:
I really think that this movie's social commentary goes far deeper than the fact that these kids are "apathetic, unmotivated, and lazy." It seems like it points to the fact that the suburbs breed apathy, as someone pointed out already. This film really paints the suburbs out to be a very barren, desolate, flat, empty, and genuinely depressing/plain landscape. Not a very enticing place, really....
And pretty *beep* pathetic, as Tim would say.
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Very true. If you think about it... this film has a lot in common with Fight Club.... although, this film is not as overt with its message. Fight Club could be the continuation of Suburbia, though. Of course, that's only if Jeff and co ever decide to even go back to college and land a desk job, heh.
Both films deal with generation x and modern angst, though.
I was extremely affected by this film. I saw it for the first time when I was 16 (10 years ago). If watching the Jeff character wasn't like looking in a mirror, I don't know what was. This is still one my favorite films of all time... what writing by Eric Bogosian (spelling?). Anyway, this movie always works when I feel like justifying the alienation in my own life. Its story is timeless (especially living in the suburbs as I did when I grew up). Definitely ahead of its time.
sharewell, i definitly advise anybody who felt deeply connected to suburbia's message to check out eric bogosian's one man show called "Sex, drugs and rock and roll"
it's a series of (seemingly) unconnected vignettes, but the last 2 to me espacially bring out the same ideas as the film, although more detailed.
the bitter ranting man claiming that it's normal to want to be famous, that repressing these normal desires gives you cancer, and the stoned out hippie looking at his neibourgh through his window, and saying "he just lies there, eyes wide open, not moving. if i didn't know he was watching tv i would think he's dead."
but of course done in a humourous and entertaining way. do yourselves a favor and check it out.
I first saw this movie when it was pretty new. I watched it while waiting around for my boyfriend at the time. I thought it was really boring. Finally he showed up and we got in this really big fight, one of many, that ended badly. I woke up really early that morning because I couldn't sleep and rewatched it and felt like I really identified with Jeff. He was in this relationship with Suze, who was more interested in her own life, and then had an attraction with someone else, and Jeff was kind of forgotten. I felt like that a lot during my relationship, so watching the move the second time really hit home for me. The end scene that ends with him walking away in slow motion was it. He is ready for it to be over, but it's still hard to break free.
shareNow that I am older and wiser since I originally made this post I can honestly say that Jeff was naive. He was smart and had much untapped potential, yet he was also very naive and unworldly. He should have gone to New York after all and seen, in his own words, homeless people upfront. The point is that he would have learned something about himself. He would have seen some real poverty, desperation, and hardship that would given him some much needed perspective in order to be thankful for whatever he had in life.
shareI was affected by Suburbia in a sense that I was surprised people in other towns/cities were doing the exact same thing as I and my circle of friends. Only I was much younger at 17 in 1996.
My whole world consisted of working during the summer, getting our older friend to buy beer for us and just hanging out all the time, not knowing any better.
I'm lucky I was able to move to the city, grow up and get a good paying job and travel the world as a lot of my peers that i went to highschool with never left and lived the same boring suburban life as Jeff and his friends.
It is a Tar pit of stupidity if you don't broaden your horizons. Thats what I got out of the film. I'm sure you would agree