more like a black comedy than an actual drama/crime movie
i think
shareYeah that's kinda what I got from it, too.
share
MovieChat Forums > River's Edge (1987) Discussion > more like a black comedy than an actual ...
LOL
shareSomewhere vaguely between the two. But the weird thing is that this film is based on real life incidents. Hard to believe people can behave like this, but apparently they can and do.🐭
shareyea i knew it was based on fact but in reality i'd say the events where nowhere near as comic or absurd.
shareYeah. When it was released, critics all mentioned the black-comedy. Now everybody treats this like it was supposed to be a "true-crime" drama. If you watch this expecting realism, and don't know anything about what teenagers were like in the '80s, you'll think this is a very badly written film. This film perfectly parodies the '80s stoner and their relationship to the culture of the times. And people think millennials are disaffected...
shareYeah, definitely. This movie has a lot of funny scenes. That's what makes the movie so great.
shareThe drector and Crispin Glover both said at the time that it was like a dak comedy about a very dark/serious event. However at the time movies like this were pretty rare and audiences/critics didn't know how to react to dark comic moments in a serious film. Its kind of amazing this film did as well as it did considering that this was during the John Hughes/Spielberg squeaky clean 80's era.
shareA little bit of all three with also an underlying mockery of 80s teen film tropes included.
I found the black comedy totally relatable as it counters the unimpeded cockiness that many teenagers exhibit in their lives and is often celebrated as cute and endearing by Hollywood. River's Edge was able to ride the razors edge between darkness and innocence in a more effective way than its more celebrated cousin "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" imho.