Friday, Sept. 27, 1996 · Page C 2

©1997 San Francisco Examiner
More Daze Than Glory
Barbara Shulgasser (EXAMINER MOVIE CRITIC)

HERE’S ANOTHER cynical movie about people in their 20s who don’t know what to do with their lives. The solution the disaffected graduating college seniors reach in “Glory Daze” is to spend one more year on their college campus rather than go out into the cruel world.
The friends who want to continue sharing a house include Jack (Ben Affleck), Dennis (French Stewart), Mickey (Vinnie DeRamus), Rob (Sam Rockwell) and Slosh (Vien Hong).
Writer-director Rich Wilkes doesn’t insert much substance into the movie, but he does take the opportunity to make fun of art education. Jack’s professor (John Rhys-Davies) tells him Jack’s project has gotten “lost in abstractionism.” “Real art is subject to a complex filtration system,” he goes on. “I look at your stuff and I see 20th century American suburbia. It doesn’t resonate.” Just the way I feel about this movie.
Later, Jack agrees with Camus’ assessment that the best love affair is with a wonderful woman who dies before you get tired of her or she can dump you.
And of course, in the ’90s you can’t have politically incorrect idiotic drunken frat parties. You have plain old idiotic drunken parties.
Matthew McConaughey appears in a cameo as a used car salesman. Spalding Gray plays the unlikely father of Jack. “What do you plan to do now that you’ve graduated?” he asks on graduation day. They’ve never had this discussion before?
“Glory Daze” was concocted early in the career of Wilkes, who went on to write those classics “Airheads”, “The Jerky Boys” and “Billy Madison”. I really don’t think anything more needs to be said on the subject of Wilkes’ talent.

Review #2

FILM REVIEW — More ‘Daze’ Than ‘Glory’ Here
EDWARD GUTHMANN, San Fransisco Chronicle Staff Critic

GLORY DAZE: Comedy. Starring Ben Affleck, Sam Rockwell, French Stewart, Spalding Gray and Matthew McConaughey. Directed and written by Rich Wilkes.

(Not rated. 104 minutes.)
Just when we thought Gen-X movies had faded, along comes “Glory Daze,” a shot-in-Santa Cruz dud that opens today at Bay Area theaters. Directed by first-time filmmaker Rich Wilkes, who wrote such lowbrow fare as “Jerky Boys,” “Billy Madison” and “Airheads,” “Glory Daze” doesn’t cover any ground that wasn’t already plowed and sprayed in previous slacker comedies.
“Glory Daze” is the story of five senior-class slobs at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Party animals one and all, the boys dwell in a dingy communal house called El Rancho Grande and share the same glib, adolescent humor, the same taste for bad head-banger music and the same fear about their uncertain future.
The point man is Jack (Ben Affleck), an angry, sexually frustrated, fun-crushing art student who gets no respect from his parents, played by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth Ruscio, and who still pines for his ex-girlfriend — a silicone-enhanced science project played by Kristin Bauer.
Rounding out the multiracial household are Rob (Sam Rockwell), a ladies’ man; Mickey (Vinnie DeRamus), who’s lonely; Josh (Vien Hong), who’s lazy; and professional student Dennis, who’s played by cast standout French Stewart, a regular on the NBC sitcom “3rd Rock From the Sun”.
Nothing much happens in “Glory Daze.” The guys party, quaff brews, kvetch about lousy job prospects (“Isn’t there a third option between burning out and fading away?” Jack asks), make crude comments about women (“She was genetically impolite”) and trash their house by heaving beer bottles and chain-sawing the thirdhand furniture.
“We’re young and stupid and unattached,” says Dennis at one point, and I beg to concur.
We learn bits and pieces about the characters, like the fact that Jack considers John Belushi a genius — he should, since “Glory Daze” apes “Animal House” so blatantly — but there’s no shape to the movie and no rhythm connecting the scenes to each other. Wilkes has a gift for nasty put-down lines, but his directing debut lacks heart and his leading man isn’t a tad sympathetic — or even slightly redeemed by Affleck’s sour performance. When Jack tries to lobby his housemates into staying on another year at Santa Cruz and postponing their entry into the real world, it’s impossible to feel much one way or the other.
There isn’t much reason to see “Glory Daze,” but if you find yourself condemned to do so, you might look for a pre-stardom Matthew McConaughey. He pops up in a 40-second scene, bearded and oily, playing a truck lot salesman.

Review #3

GLORY DAZE
A film review by Steve Rhodes

“Ever wonder whatever happens to the pampered rich kids the liberal arts colleges turn out year after year?” GLORY DAZE opens with that question, but the answer they give is less than satisfying. Rich kids it seems are so enamored with their pointless partying and hanging out, that they don’t want to leave. You, on the other hand, may want to make a fast exit if you accidentally find yourself watching this assemblage of cardboard characters. This movie gives a new meaning to the word boredom.
Set in the lovely seaside college town of Santa Cruz, we have a group of college seniors (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Vinnie DeRamus, Vien Hong, and French Stewart) who live together in a rented house.
Actually Slosh (Vien Hong) has long since given up on college, but the others are preparing to leave town after graduation until they decide that they can not give up their male camaraderie. They take an unconvincing vow to stay together for another year. Jack (Affleck) says, “Let’s rage at the dying of the light a little bit.” Continuing in this stream of insightful thinking, he later tells us that, “People say nothing is forever. I say how do you explain herpes or The Grateful Dead?”
Decorating the guy’s world are a group of women (Alyssa Milano,Megan Ward, and others). The guys are stick figures, but the women’s roles are worse – visual wallpaper.
The writer of THE JERKY BOYS, Rich Wilkes, takes his first stab at directing with this film, and he also wrote the script. The film is so bad that it borders on self-parody. Some of the dialog is kind of cute in the abstract but is leaden in this low energy and never believablefilm. Think of it as ANIMAL HOUSE ON VALIUM.
As they line up for their graduation materials, the smart aleck kid handing them out ridicules each student with individualized jokes. “Psychology major right? I love my mother, but not as much as you guys think I do.”
Although the kids in the film spend time in class on such artistic creations as a golden hand holding a CD, their professor seems to be even more unbelievable. Art Professor Luther (John Rhys-Davies who was Sallah in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK) alternates between trying to seduce his minions and providing cheap philosophy including: “It is poetry that will save the world, not commerce,” and “Art isn’t just the vomiting up of adolescent angst.”
Nothing, I repeat nothing, happens in the movie. The picture tries sometimes to be mildly offense by using gratuitous bad language and constant drinking. Their parties feature a guy with a funnel so he can drink himself to death at a record pace. Actually, the show is so lame that it is not even effective at being offensive since these scenes are all so false.
In my least favorite sequence, the fascinating monologist and fair actor Spalding Gray (MONSTER IN A BOX) plays Jack’s father. Jack’s parents are visiting the college to ridicule their son Jack for not being on the fast track in life like them. Jack rebels, “Mom, dad, you both screwed up your lives. Now back off and give me a chance to screw up mine.” His dad tells him his liberal arts education is worthless and to, “send me a postcard from skid row.”
The only character with any charisma is the shy cartoonist and student Mickey (DeRamus), but his lines are pathetic. When he finally gets his putative girlfriend to his room, his come on line is, “I like you – the kind of like you where I get to see you naked. No more of this palsie walsie stuff.”
At the end the movie attempts to come alive with a few shocks. Dennis (Stewart) calls their actions, “Preservation through destruction.” Like the rest of the picture it is predictable and an unmitigated disaster.
GLORY DAZE runs about an hour and a half, but will feel like an eternity. It was not yet rated when I saw it, but I suspect it will get a PG-13 or an R. There is no violence or sex, but there is a little nudity and a fair amount of bad language. The film should be acceptable for most teenagers although I am not fond of the message it gives, but I strongly recommend that this miserable piece of film making be avoided by all ages. Only because it was more boring than painful, do I give it 1/2 of a star.