Delayed Reaction: Diner

Premise: A bunch of college-aged friends in 1959 hang out and stuff.

There are a lot of way to think of this movie. It's the first of Barry Levinson's "Baltimore Films". You can maybe look at this as the next step in boomer-malaise that was crystalized in The Big Chill and later thirtysomething. But, I find it easiest to look at this as American Graffiti with fewer cars. It's a lot of the same ideas. Giant cast of people you can still recognize nearly 40 years later. Episodic plot that's never in a hurry. Same era, different coast. I like all those things about it, especially the cast. It's nice to see Steve Guttenberg and Daniel Stern looking so young. It's unsettling to compare Micky Rourke then and now.

The movie has aged in some unfortunate ways. The "popcorn scene" obviously doesn't look great under a modern lens, especially since Rourke is practically rewarded for it. Stern yelling at his wife about his record collection was deeply unpleasant. The football quiz as well. There was something about this group of guys that made me not enjoy following them around. I'm not sure exactly what it was about them. On paper, are they really that different than the American Graffiti crowd or the baseball team from Everybody Wants Some!!? Perhaps it's the Barry Levinson of it all. Other than his back-to-back of Good Morning, Vietnam and Rain Man, I've been pretty cold on almost all of his movies. And even those two were more about great performances than anything in the direction or screenplays.

I get why this is a well-regarded movie though. It captures a time and a feeling well, even if that time and feeling was "1982 at the movies". All it takes is a fondness for Steven Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, or Paul Reiser to have an in with this movie. None of those guys hit my sweet spot though.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend