Writer-director Gregg Araki’s ambitious and successful 1997 movie is zany alternative entertainment for cool entertainment folk. It revolves around the omni-sexual lives of the young, beautiful and doomed drifting through the sun-baked inferno of Los Angeles.
The final film of Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, after Totally F***ed Up (1994) and The Doom Generation (1995), Nowhere easily achieves its ambition to be a hyper-real, colour-saturated Beverly Hills 90210 episode on acid. The story follows an interwoven network of doomed youths as they experience teenage doubt and insecurity, the highs and lows of adolescent love, S&M, hallucinogenics, rape, murder and alien abductions.
James Duval, who also starred in Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation, makes an extremely engaging, utterly huggable lost hero as Dark Smith, and the alien’s pretty cute too.
The moral at the end seems to be that, when you finally do find true love, he’ll be abducted by aliens and explode in your face. This is seriously sexy, wild, hilarious stuff.
Araki has managed to assemble an astonishing cast this time: Christina Applegate, Debi Mazar, Chiara Mastroianni, Traci Lords, Shannen Doherty, Heather Graham, John Ritter, Beverly D’Angelo, Rachel True, Kathleen Robertson, Joshua Mayweather, Jordan Ladd, Sarah Lassez, Scott Caan, Guillermo Diaz, Ryan Phillippe, Alan Boyce and Jaason Simmons.
It was advertised as ‘Clueless with nipple rings’.
Gregg Araki is also known for Mysterious Skin (2004), Kaboom (2010) and White Bird in a Blizzard (2014).
http://derekwinnert.com/totally-fed-up-1994-gregg-araki-classic-film-review-1039/
http://derekwinnert.com/the-doom-generation-1995-gregg-araki-classic-film-review-1040/
http://derekwinnert.com/mysterious-skin-classic-film-review-160/
(C) Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Film Review 1041 derekwinnert.com