#AFilmbyRichardLinklater

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

""SUBURBIA" IS ONE OF LINKLATER'S LEAST-LOVED FILMS, CONSISTENTLY RANKED NEAR THE BOTTOM IN INTERNET LISTICLES..."

NOTE: A film such as this would be mercilessly slammed today as there are virtually zero non-white actors in the primary cast. Furthermore, a film such as this would more than likely bomb even worse today than it did in '97.

"There is something particularly forlorn about the Texas suburb. In the opening frames of Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia, released 25 years ago this month, the camera drifts slowly past subdivisions and superstores plopped dispassionately onto the rolling Texas expanse. This erstwhile frontier, where mavericks and rebels came to wrest their fortunes out of the ground, is a blur of McDonalds drive-throughs and beige, boxy McMansions. It is uniquely dispiriting.

SubUrbia is one of Linklater’s least-loved films, consistently ranked near the bottom in Internet listicles appraising the Austin director’s career. And at least some of that is because it’s kind of a drag. Compared with the rest of what Linklater would, in 1997, call his “hangin’ out quintet” — an oeuvre that included "Slacker," "Dazed and Confused," "Before Sunrise," and his micro-budget debut, "It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books" — "SubUrbia" is certainly less romantic or nostalgic about the dreamy idleness of youth. At the time, Linklater even told the Austin Chronicle that "SubUrbia" marked “the nail in the coffin” for those kinds of stories. It was a bold statement that, thankfully, didn’t prove to be true."

-- TEXAS MONTHLY, "A Reconsideration of "SubUrbia," One of Richard Linklater’s Least-Loved Films," by Sean O'Neal, February 2022

Source: www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/suburbia-richard-linklater-reconsideration.