Humorless, smarmy Brits - who overrate their eloquence and wit - attempting to humiliate prospective roommates through a bombardment of random questions and supposedly penetrating insights into their character flaws. The thoroughly unfunny opening pretty much typified the rest of this hipster turd. There's little worse than smug hipsters who have a false elevated sense of the quality and humor underlying their viciousness. <a big FU to the Union Jack>
shareAnd it's because of their empty, shallow behavior that we enjoy their downfall when they begin to turn on one another. What happens when you trap the snakes in the pit? They eat one another.
shareExactly. The opening scene tells us everything we need to know about the main characters. We're not meant to like them and they certainly aren't role models.
That said, there were a lot of twentysomethings in the early 1990s who did behave in that cold, cynical way (dismembering dead flatmates aside). In that sense, the movie did a good job of pointing out where Generation X had lost its way.
Make tea, not war.
''there were a lot of twentysomethings in the early 1990s who did behave in that cold, cynical way .In that sense, the movie did a good job of pointing out where Generation X had lost its way.''
people in their 20s like that are not exclusive to the 90s era, having house shared over much of the 2000s i can tell you there's still loads of *beep* people like them in their 20s.
Pretty much with you, even though I understand the replies (pointing out that that was likely what Boyle was after). Just smarmy, amoral Eurotrashiness from the get-go. It's true that they weren't supposed to be "role models" or "likable" or any of that, but the trick with characters like this is to do something to make an audience interested in them for some reason other than pure nihilism or amorality. At some point you end up simply committing a variation on the imitative fallacy in which (for instance) to get across the idea of boredom, you do boring scenes; to get across the idea of how much TV loves violence, you wallow in violence with your film (cf. Natural Born Killers); and here, allegedly to lampoon this kind of nihilistic shallowness and worthlessness, you make a film that for a preponderance of its running time is nihilistic, shallow, and worthless, and then when you do get to the sort-of-justice part of the proceedings, really it's just a matter of consequences, not any sort of moral or ethical awakening, or any kind of humanness. Even killers and rapists try to avoid punishment or retribution. It sounds like you're about as tired of this kind of wallow as I am.
Have to say, I was completely underwhelmed, and mostly for the same general category of rationale as in Trainspotting.
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Dear CCR,
I think that was the whole point. To be superficially funny, but actually betraying the unpleasantness of the three protagonists.
Sorry if you now hate the UK. (Although it does appear that you thought that before you posted).
All best,
Jon
Err, this is a movie. If I had been interviewed by them, I'd probably walk out hating them. But as a viewer I find them entertaining and amusing. You call them humourless, but apparently you don't even have enough sense of humour to enjoy a black comedy and to draw a line between films and real life.
shareCunty metropolitan hipsters are not a UK-exclusive phenomenon. Have you seen Brooklyn? Universities across the West spit these rootless Left-wing narcissists out into the cities like a conveyor belt. You’ll find them in coffee shops with their iPads.
The difference is that now they’re much worse - they’re obnoxious Woke prudes who can’t wait to scold normal people for not buying into their tedious and deranged Woke cult.