Diner

It's Christmas Night 1959 Baltimore. A group of friends reunite for Eddie Simmons (Steve Guttenberg)'s marriage. Shrevie (Daniel Stern) and Beth Schreiber (Ellen Barkin) are unhappily married. Boogie (Mickey Rourke) is the slick womanizer. Fenwick (Kevin Bacon) is the prankster. Modell (Paul Reiser) and Billy (Tim Daly) round out the group. Their hangout is the Hilltop Diner.

It's a very impressive cast. Everybody is terrific acting-wise. However I couldn't really get into the meandering nature of the movie. I found it hard to concentrate on any of the characters. It doesn't have the light fun of 'American Graffiti'. I would have liked a movie of them just talking in the diner about their lives.

Diner, Barry Levinson's writing and directing debut belongs to so-called "small" or "minor" movies and it indeed does not have spectacular locations, breathtaking action sequences or even dramatic story. As Kevin Bacon comments in the Behind the Scenes Documentary, "There's not that much of a story, really. What do we do? We drive around..." What the movie has is "a very honest portrayal of a group...of guys that people relate to on a very personal level." The different generations of viewers react to film with devotion and recognition, and Diner has become one of the beloved long time cult favorites. Based on its writer/director's memories of growing up in Baltimore, the film takes place during the week between Christmas and New Year in 1959, and tells of the friendship of five guys in their early twenties. During the course of the film, we will get to know the young men, their fears of growing up, facing responsibilities, and making decisions, their fascination and insecurities with the girls.

From his Oscar-nominated script, BL makes the study of young men who hesitate to grow up but rather hang out in their beloved Diner. Daniel Stern's 'Shrevie' is an owner of LP collection that he seems to value more than his young and pretty wife (Ellen Barkin in her film debut). Mickey Rourke, played his best role (at least, IMO) as Boogy, the cynical womanizer with the most charming smile. Steve Guttenberg's Eddie puts his fiancée through the enormously difficult football quiz and the passing score is the must for the marriage because he is scared to get married. Kevin Bacon plays Fenwick, a permanently drunk and lost kid, the character much darker than the rest of the guys. Timothy Daly is Bill who seems to be the most successful of the bunch, and know what he wants but can't make the girl he loves to love him. By making Diner, Levinson actually put his native city, sleepy and provincial 1959 Baltimore, on the cinema map, and that's just one of movie's pleasures. And there are plenty. Diner is filled with authentic and believable scenes, situations, and conversations that everyone can relate to. The Diner's menu has a lot to offer to the grateful viewers and fans of the insightful, ironic, entertaining, small but bright and shiny gem. Barry Levinson does not flatter six protagonists but he understands them and loves them because he sees in them the indelible part of his own life, his experiences, and his own childhood friends. As another great film about childhood friendship says, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

Barry Levinson went on to create many good and very good films after Diner. These are just a few: The Natural, Good Morning, Vietnam; Bugsy; Avalon; Sleepers, An Everlasting Piece, Disclosure, Wag the Dog, and his Oscar winner "Rain Man" but Diner will always have a very special place for me. This is the film I keep coming back to again and again, and as the time passes it only gets better.

Barry Levinson's pictures always succeed in painting a nostalgic feelgood picture of a certain era. Really lovely to watch, but the downside of director Barry Levinson's pictures is the fact that they are always a bit safe. No big dramas, no experiments. Despite this characteristic "Diner" is still a very endearing and touching story.

As far as "Diner" is concerned I think that this is probably Levinson's best work, because of the excellent true to life depiction of young adult's life in the fifties. It feels as if I was right there.

The story is about a group of friends who are on the verge of losing their freedom of their youth because marriage and boring jobs are waiting for them. "Diner" is the excellent warm hearted portrait of one last brawl together with their childhood friends, before everyboby realizes they have to enter the world of the grown ups, with all the accompanying, depressing responsibilities that come along with it.

It actually is not about food - it is about how men grow up .. or do they? There is a case to be made about boys never really (or rarely) grow up to be men. And with a cast that is quite astonishing ... with themes that at least still to this day seem ageless ... while technology and other things do advance, there is a universal truth about issues most of us face while growing up.

Tough to say if in decades from now this looks like something that people can not connect anymore. Or not to the degree we think they are able to ... Back to the cast and not just Steve Guttenberg surprising me or a young Kevin Bacon (with a hint to the Friday franchise and Ketchup?), but even more so with a young rebel by the name of Mickey Rourke. I almost did not recognize him. But there are also some very fine female performers in this, the movie overall does focus on the male outlook though. Then again issues with OCD or something similar are not gender related of course ... even if it again mostly is put on the male cast here.

A good movie for anyone who likes movies about ... something or nothing in particular other than life and choices and relationships ... with some amazing performances to say the least.

As far as capturing a bygone era, DINER is a superb piece of cinematic worldbuilding: the cars, clothes, music, and popular culture shown all scream of the 1950s without glamming up the period too much, as everything looks lived-in and ordinary. The acting is superb across the board with Mickey Rourke as the standout.

The story itself is nothing too special. It clearly wants to be like AMERICAN GRAFFITI, capturing a sense of lost innocence and Baby Boomer nostalgia, but I did not care for the characters at all. When it comes to characters in a story, they have to be at least one of two things: sympathetic or interesting. The folks peopling DINER are neither. Most of the stories don't add up to much either: I was most interested in Rourke's conflict with the mob and the dilemma of the young pregnant woman who wants to keep her job rather than become a housewife, but none of this goes anywhere.

Much has been made of the misogyny in the film, but I have to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt-- it's probably intentional since all these guys are self-absorbed, immature, and (with the exception of the Timothy Daly character) unable to see the women in their lives as anything other than add-ons to their own lives. None of this is portrayed as natural or good, though it is true that the women in the film don't receive much development... though again, neither do the male characters, hence my disinterest in the film as anything other than a technically competent exercise in nostalgia.

PS To be honest, the only scene where I laughed was during the hilarious butchering of "Blue Moon" at the wedding. That's it.