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Dazed and Confused: Flashback Edition

Universal Home Video

Starring Starring Wiley Wiggins, Jason London, Ben Affleck,
and Matthew McConaughey

Written and Directed by Richard Linklater

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Review by Gregory P. Dorr                    


"If I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself." Randall "Pink" Floyd (Jason London) makes this sober request on the last day of high school, 1976. He's not your typical depressed teenager, however; he's the popular incoming-senior quarterback in a gridiron-crazy Austin, Texas suburb. His teammates revere him, the girls love him, and, if he plays ball — and signs a team pledge eschewing beer and drugs — he can write his own ticket anywhere in town.

Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) is an incoming-freshman, and he regards the liberating promise of summer with a steady sense of dread. Freshmen in this town are subjected to degrading and violent hazing rituals at the hands of the seniors; the girls are harassed, smeared with condiments, and run through a car wash in an open-bed pickup, and the boys are hunted down and viciously swatted with thick, wooden paddles. Mitch is singled out and given the worst of the day's beatings, until sympathetic Floyd takes him under his wing and invites him out to party.

Dazed and Confused too easily slips into the genre of raucous, drug-filled, good-old-days, coming-of-age pictures to receive the credit it deserves as a mature and complicated dissection of the peer pressures and rebellious aimlessness of youth. On its sleeve, the movie is swift and funny, filled with hi-jinks, the best of the period's party rock music, and lots of teens engaging in controlled substances and talking about — not having — sex. But it's underneath this buoyant and light-hearted veneer that writer-director Richard Linklater subtly and meaningfully examines his characters.

Mitch and Floyd are essentially the same character, split only by three years of high school experience. Mitch, a likable innocent, is just being introduced to the rituals of humiliation and oppression — intricately enjoined with his ensuing popularity — that have left Floyd jaded. Mitch endures his hazing reluctantly, but bravely, and is rewarded with the attentions of a pretty sophomore and a night of beer-filled celebration. Floyd, meanwhile, seeks release from the pressure of his teammates and belittling coaches by hanging with a rowdy group of pot-smokers deemed unacceptable company for someone of his promise. The oldest of this group, Wooderson (a sublime early performance by Matthew McConaughey), is a former football-hero a few years out of high school — in age only. His carefree demeanor (really a desperate cling to adolescence) appeals to Floyd — and, in turn, Mitch. He is the third stage in the Mitch-Floyd evolution, and a warning sign on the sad road to nowhere

The beautiful success of Dazed and Confused is how Linklater presents it all with a touch so light and humorous, the gravity is hardly felt. Instead of looking in on this assembly of searching and lost youth from the ponderous point-of-view of adulthood, he looks at it from the inside-out. Unlike his contemporary follow-up film Suburbia, none of the teens in Dazed and Confused try to sort out their lives in pretentious monologue. To paraphrase Francis Ford Coppola, Dazed and Confused isn't about high school. It is high school. Nobody (save Adam Goldberg, in a hilarious and moving performance) dwells on their problems. There's a big party going on. They'd rather grab a beer and tune out.

The young ensemble cast is terrific: London, Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Sasha Jenson, Rory Cochrane, Marissa Ribisi, Christin Hinojosa, Michelle Burke, Cole Hauser, Joey Lauren Adams, Milla Jovovich, as well as Ben Affleck and Parker Posey as two seniors a wee overzealous in hazing the newbies.

*          *          *

Universal's "Flashback Edition" of Dazed and Confused presents the film in a good anamorphic transfer (1.85:1) with audio in Dolby Digital 5.1. It includes 15 minutes of deleted scenes which, like most reels of deleted scenes, testify to the skill of the film's editor and the good judgment of the director. Also included are a 5-minute parody of anti-marijuana public service films, plus a pair of real PSAs, one warning against the spread of VD, and the other the famous "crying Indian" anti-pollution spot. They're a little strange as bonuses to accompany this particular film, but enjoyable nonetheless. Trailer, keep case in shiny paperboard sleeve. Also available in "The Ultimate Party Collection," a 2-pak including Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

— Gregory P. Dorr

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