...things just move quickly from one person's conflicts to another, with little momentum or feeling of satisfaction.
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If you liked the popular music of the eighties and nineties, "Empire Records" may be right up your Tin Pan Alley. Personally, I find most of the pop-rock music of that era mundane and repetitive, but, then, I'm a fogey so what do I know.
While the movie was hardly a smash success when it was released to theaters in 1995, it has since picked up a minor cult following thanks to video. As a result, Warner Brothers have re-released it on DVD in a new Special Fan Edition called "Empire Records Remix!," which adds about sixteen more minutes of footage to the film. Interestingly, while the original rating was PG-13, the film is now classified as "Not Rated." I assume this is because the "Remix" was never resubmitted to the ratings board, not because there is anything offensive about the additional material.
In the film, Empire Records is a small, independent record store about to be gobbled up by a big record-store chain, Music Town. The movie recounts a day in the life of the store during the week before the big takeover, presenting a series of seriocomic vignettes that are neither very serious nor very comic. But the film does have its few affecting moments, and everything is done so earnestly it's hard to knock it too hard.
The movie stars a shop-load of top names going nowhere. Chief among them is Anthony LaPaglia as Joe Reaves, the store's manager and the only semblance of maturity in the picture. He's a kind of father figure to his youthful employees, who comprise the bulk of the cast. The interrelationships of these largely maladjusted young clerks make up the story.
Let me describe a few of the cast members and you'll get the idea. The character we meet first is Lucas (Rory Cochrane), a goofy clerk who has just stolen and gambled away a day's store receipts in the hope of raising enough money to keep the place from falling into the hands of the evil Music Town. We trust he's got something more up his sleeve than the zombielike expression he wears as he admits his crime and is confined to a sofa for the duration of the story. We figure he's either a Zen master or an idiot.
Then, there's A.J. (Johnny Whitworth), who's in love with another clerk, Corey, and wants to go to art school. Corey (Liv Tyler) is Miss Perfect, who's in love with a has-been rock star and has just been accepted to Harvard. Miss Tyler's major contribution to the film is exposing her bare midriff. Next is Gina (Renee Zellweger), a promiscuous clerk with a penchant for short skirts. Zellweger is her usual effervescent self until the end, when things turn more weighty. After her we have Debra (Robin Tunney), a manic-depressive punker who has recently tried to commit suicide, and Berko (Coyote Shivers), Debra's sometime boyfriend. Then, there's Mark (Ethan Embry, credited as Ethan Randall), a really dumb clerk into heavy metal; Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield), the aforementioned over-the-hill rock star; Jane (Debi Mazar), Rex's personal assistant; Eddie (James 'Kimo' Wills), another clerk; Warren (Brendan Sexton), a young shoplifter; and Mitchell (Ben Bode), the store's uptight owner.
Most of the movie's success must be attributed to the musical excerpts continuously playing in the background and to the total sincerity of the cast, who give their all to a script that gives none of them much in return. The problem with a cast so large and so stereotyped is that no one gets much attention; things just move quickly from one person's conflicts to another, with little momentum or feeling of satisfaction.
Nonetheless, the film does attain a sense of purpose by its predictable, inevitable end, a conclusion so sweet it may win over a few diehard antagonists. Unfortunately, one has to endure the rather tedious first half of the film to reach the finale, and this may be too taxing for many viewers.
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[release]10897[/release]