Diner **** (1982, Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern) – Classic Movie Review 1548

Writer-director Barry Levinson’s 1982 breakthrough movie focuses poignantly and incisively on a group of half-dozen college-age Baltimore buddies who spend the last days of 1959 trying to work out their problems with girls, money and their future in the local Fells Point Diner. Beautifully played and splendidly written, this is a little gem of a movie.

The six buddies celebrate Christmas and face up to the struggle with their imminent passage into adulthood in Levinson’s bitter-sweet, end-of-era, coming-of-age nostalgic saga. Baltimore Colts fanatic Eddie (Steve Guttenberg) is planning to get married to Elyse (Sharon Ziman) on New Year’s Eve. Hesitant, he turns for advice to the group’s only married guy, electronics salesman and music aficionado Shrevie (Daniel Stern), whose unhappy wife Beth (Ellen Barkin) is thinking about having an affair.

Exciting performances from the then rising young stars Steve Guttenberg (as Eddie), Daniel Stern (Shrevie), Mickey Rourke (Boogie), Kevin Bacon (Fenwick), Timothy Daly (Billy), Paul Reiser (Modell) and Ellen Barkin (as Beth Schreiber) combine with the good humour, sharpness and wit infusing début director Levinson’s screenplay to produce an extremely tasty meal seasoned with great charisma all round.

Bacon’s role as Timothy Fenwick Jr  here was the springboard to his part in his breakthrough movie, Footloose.

Diner is an obvious labour of love movie, beautifully crafted by writer-director Levinson. Baltimore is his home town, and this is his first of several semi-autobiographical films with this setting, followed by Avalon and Tin Men (1987), with his fourth in the similar Liberty Heights (2000). Levinson was Oscar nominated for Best Original Screenplay and eventually won his Oscar as Best Director for Rain Man (1988).

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1548

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