My three friends and I rented this from Blockbuster (with some trepidation) on the vague promise of the title alone. We didn't make it past about twenty minutes in, concluding (rather prematurely, as it transpired) that this was a joke we simply weren't in on.
Then a month or two later a strange thing happened: All of us began remembering absurd jokes and scenes; like a random jump-cut to a shark or a poorly spliced black & white b-roll of a burning town, and began excitedly quoting what dialogue we could recall, bringing us to tears of laughter as we all questioned: What on Earth had we witnessed? Was this divine absurdity a shared fever-dream, and why hadn't we stuck with it?
We rented it again and watched incredulously, trying to hold ourselves together as we rewound scenes with bemused delight to confirm the reality of what we were witnessing, and to constantly remind ourselves that we weren't collapsing in laughter from the onset of a huge, sublime dose of LSD.
Quite simply, life has never been the same since. "Immensely quotable" cannot begin to convey the genius of its dialogue (it's been something of a challenge, or I daresay a miracle, not to use any quotes in this review).
It's one of those films that has to be watched from beginning to end, every time you think of it. I must have racked up hundreds of viewings without exaggeration and still it never gets old. It's the film that miraculously keeps on giving, long after it should have been buried in concrete and is truly the high watermark in writer/director Stephen Tobolowsky's starred career.
It is quite simply a surrealist masterpiece of modern cinema and anyone who says different is an idiot.
Then a month or two later a strange thing happened: All of us began remembering absurd jokes and scenes; like a random jump-cut to a shark or a poorly spliced black & white b-roll of a burning town, and began excitedly quoting what dialogue we could recall, bringing us to tears of laughter as we all questioned: What on Earth had we witnessed? Was this divine absurdity a shared fever-dream, and why hadn't we stuck with it?
We rented it again and watched incredulously, trying to hold ourselves together as we rewound scenes with bemused delight to confirm the reality of what we were witnessing, and to constantly remind ourselves that we weren't collapsing in laughter from the onset of a huge, sublime dose of LSD.
Quite simply, life has never been the same since. "Immensely quotable" cannot begin to convey the genius of its dialogue (it's been something of a challenge, or I daresay a miracle, not to use any quotes in this review).
It's one of those films that has to be watched from beginning to end, every time you think of it. I must have racked up hundreds of viewings without exaggeration and still it never gets old. It's the film that miraculously keeps on giving, long after it should have been buried in concrete and is truly the high watermark in writer/director Stephen Tobolowsky's starred career.
It is quite simply a surrealist masterpiece of modern cinema and anyone who says different is an idiot.