Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

Reality Bites Blu-ray Movie Review

Girl, Uninterruptible

Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 30, 2014

As a director, Ben Stiller remains hard to categorize. He makes comedies and has a dead-on satirical aim, but Stiller never seems content with just evoking laughs. There's always something else at work in his films, and it often makes people uncomfortable, which is why it's rare when he has a big success like Tropic Thunder. In Stiller's hands, even a broad farce like Zoolander acquired quirky overtones that inhibited easy laughter. The same phenomenon led to the cancellation of Stiller's critically acclaimed TV show on the Fox channel. And when Stiller let Jim Carrey explore the dark side of his comic persona in The Cable Guy, the result was the first box office flop for the previously infallible star.

Stiller's offbeat sensibility was already on display in his first feature, Reality Bites, based on a first-time script by film student Helen Childress and one of the earliest productions from Jersey Films, which later shepherded such notable works as Out of Sight, Get Shorty and Pulp Fiction. Producer Michael Shamberg wanted to make a film about what would later be called "Generation X", but no one realized at the time that the issues about which Childress was writing would continue to be relevant several decades later. Even in a landscape transformed by smartphones, the internet and social media, college graduates still enter a tough job market with heads stuffed with high ideals, only to find their expectations dashed. Relationships are still challenging, families are still frustrating, and money is still tight.

Reality Bites was a tough sell to studios until the script was adopted by Winona Ryder, whose career was then at its peak and who was looking for a contemporary role to play after a series of costume dramas. As the film's depressed, conflicted, smart-but-hopeless center, Ryder creates a character that is, in many respects, the successor to her career-defining Veronica in Heathers. Having determined, as Veronica did, to get "cool guys" out of her life, Ryder's character in Reality Bites finds herself inconveniently attracted to one of them—and doesn't know what to do about it.

Much of Reality Bites consists of videotape (real, old-fashioned videotape) shot by Lelaina Pierce (Ryder) for a documentary she envisions about life as she knows it. Like screenwriter Childress, Lelaina uses herself and her friends as raw material. The first images we see are of Lelaina speaking as class valedictorian at her college commencement (videotaped, one presumes, by a family member). In a moment that foreshadows much of the film, Lelaina discovers that she's missing a critical index card as she reaches the climax of the speech, and she has to wing it.

Lelaina's parents (Joe Don Baker and Swoosie Kurtz) are divorced and can barely stand to be in the same room with one another, but they dutifully attend a congratulatory dinner with their daughter, where Mr. Pierce gives his daughter a car and a gas charge card that he says he'll pay for one year. The card will figure in an extended routine later in the film, when Lelaina gets herself into a financial jam.

After graduation, Lelaina shares a house with her best friend, Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo), who manages a GAP store, and tries to break into television via an internship at a local daytime program hosted by Grant Gubler (John Mahoney), whose saccharine onscreen persona is the exact opposite of the gruff bastard he really is. Like many youngsters new to the workplace, Lelaina expects to be taken seriously as a person and is shocked when she's treated like cannon fodder. The job doesn't last long, and Lelaina begins a steady downward spiral at home on the couch.

Lelaina's situation is worsened by the presence of Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke), a nihilistic "cool guy" with a 180 IQ, who writes songs and plays in a band. Dyer long ago concluded that life is pointless; his answering machine message asks callers to leave their name, number and "a brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man's existential dilemma". He sleeps with numerous women (including Renée Zellweger, in an early film appearance) and dangles Lelaina on a string. When Vickie lets him crash at their place for a few nights (which turns into more), Lelaina objects because he's "a master at the art of time suckage". Vickie understands what's really going on. "Would the two of you just do it and get it over with?" she says at one point, sick of the bickering that masks their attraction.

A fourth member of the group is Sammy Gray (Steve Zahn), whose role was reduced during script development, but who provides a quiet balance. Later in the film, his story comes briefly to the fore, and the reason for Sammy's reserve becomes evident.

An outsider enters when Lelaina meets Michael Grates (the name is suggestive; Stiller plays him), a programmer for an MTV-like channel called "In Your Face". He and Lelaina begin dating, and Troy hates him instantly. When Michael sees Lelaina's raw video footage, he immediately wants to show it to his bosses, who promptly offer to buy it for a show to be called "Reality Bites" (as in "Sound Bites"). Very quickly, Lelaina is faced with the classic dilemma between selling out and letting Michael's network reshape her work (but thereby solving all her money problems) or sticking to her artistic vision.

Stiller's gift for ambiguity is what keeps Reality Bites fresh and challenging, even after twenty years. All of the main characters alternate between insightful and idiotic, entertaining and obnoxious, potentially good people and utter losers. Each is, in his or her own way, trying to find a path through a confusing landscape for which there is no reliable map and in which the signposts keep changing. Like most of us, they're doing the best they can. Reality Bites captures these particular individuals at a specific moment in time, but the basic struggle hasn't changed.

Reality Bites Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Reality Bites was shot by a young Emmanuel Lubezki, who has since become one of the most respected cinematographers in the industry, most recently winning the 2014 Oscar for Gravity. On the commentary track, Stiller refers to "Chivo's" perfectionism in lighting various scenes.

Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is somewhat tricky to evaluate, because much of the film was actually shot and edited on conventional videotape (not even digital video) and will therefore never look any better than the source. The portions shot on film are sharp, clear and detailed with a realistic palette that shies away from overly saturated colors. However, consistent with Universal's frequent approach to catalog titles, these portions have been mastered to minimize their origination as film. Grain is largely absent, although any degraining appears to have been performed with the kind of software applied in today's digital intermediate suites, which leaves the detail intact. Nor did I see evidence of any compensatory artificial sharpening, which would have added video noise. The result is an image that most viewers will probably enjoy and only a minority of video enthusiasts will find suspect. (Of course, it is possible that projection at sizes larger than my 72" screen may reveal additional flaws. If so, please let me know.)

The average bitrate is a generous 33.01 Mbps. Compression artifacts were not an issue.

Reality Bites Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The film's original 5.1 soundtrack is presented on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA. Dialogue is clear, even in its somewhat hollow and compressed rendition in the film's videotape segments. But the most memorable element of the Reality Bites soundtrack is the careful selection of pop tunes through which the characters express themselves and which spawned a hit album. Some of the notable songs include "My Sharona" by the Knack; "Tempted" by Squeeze, which is playing when Lelaina first meets Michael; "All I Want Is You" by U2; and "Stay (I Missed You)" by Lisa Loeb, which became a number one single. Ben Stiller discusses many of the selections—and several songs he wasn't able to get—on the commentary track. In the film's mix, songs often begin as source music, then expand into the full surround array as they inform the characters' world. Ethan Hawke performs several songs in character as Troy Dyer, and the Blu-ray's reproduction is no doubt superior to what one would hear in a live venue.

Reality Bites Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Universal first released Reality Bites on DVD in 1998 with only a theatrical trailer and talent biographies. In 2004, the studio released a "10th Anniversary Edition" DVD with a host of new extras, all of which have been ported over to Blu-ray:

• Commentary with Actor/Director Ben Stiller and Writer Helen Childress: Ten years after the film's release, the director and writer reminisce about the experience of developing and making the film. Although they initially complain about faded memories, much comes back to them as they prompt each other (including making fun of typical commentary behavior). What emerges very clearly from their comments is that, despite the ambition of producer Michael Shamberg to make a statement about a generation, the people making the movie were simply trying to portray individuals as honestly as possible, which is one reason why the film holds up.



• Deleted Scenes (480i; 1.33:1 & 1.85:1; 17:54): A "play all" function is included, as well as optional video introductions by Stiller and Childress to the first three scenes, which are the most significant deletions.
• Chinese Fire Drill
• Waterfall Scene
• Talent Show
• Group Therapy
• Hot Dog on a Stick
• The Only Thing I Learned in College
• It's Hard to Find Good Help



• Reality Bites: Retrospective (480i; 1.33:1; 30:15): This informative documentary reviews the history of the project through interviews with all the principal cast, as well as writer Childress and producers Shamberg and Stacey Sher.



• Lisa Loeb: Stay (480i; 1.33:1; 5:48): In these interviews, Lisa Loeb and Ethan Hawke describe how Loeb's song "Stay" came to be part of the film and a bonus track, in an alternate version, on the 10th anniversary soundtrack album.



• Music Video: "Stay (I Missed You)" by Lisa Loeb (480i; 1.33:1; 3:04): Directed by Hawke.



• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 1.33:1; 2:12): Set to David Bowie's "Young Americans" and The Knack's "My Sharona", the trailer is a collection of punchlines.

Reality Bites Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Helen Childress' script for Reality Bites explores much of the same territory that Lena Dunham has staked out in her series Girls, but Childress got there before Sex and the City had created a genre pigeonhole and HBO had built its marketing machine. With Stiller's eccentric touch, the film has a roughhewn, handcrafted quality, and it still conveys the sense of excitement, as its creators explore something new and intriguing, without ever trying to Make A Statement. X Stiller's preferred register as a comic is self-mockery, and he brings the same quality to his work as a director. No one gets to take themselves too seriously in Reality Bites. Whenever they do, they get bitten. Despite minor video concerns, highly recommended.