‘The older you do get the more rules they’re gonna try to get you to follow…’
The coming-of-age movie, a bildungsroman, a teen comedy… call it what you want, it is a rite of passage as a teenager to watch other teenagers (or twenty-somethings pretending to be teenagers) navigating the end of their adolescence onscreen. I could point to Stand By Me, Superbad, Almost Famous and the American Pie franchise as my own touchpoint in this genre, but Dazed and Confused is perhaps the quintessential last-day-of-school adventure. It’s still as dazzlingly brilliant as it was the first time I saw it…
In true Richard Linklater style, Dazed and Confused doesn’t really have a protagonist (Jason London’s reluctant starring quarterback Randall ‘Pink’ Floyd’ probably comes closest), instead following a sprawling collection of characters with an ensemble cast of soon-to-be-famous nobodies including Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich and Ben Affleck. It’s 1976. The kids are determined to celebrate the last day of school in style. Classic ’70s rock blares out across pretty much every scene. What else could you possibly ask for?
Linklater draws on his own adolescence to create a world that feels fully lived in and authentic. It’s not just that the characters themselves feel real, it’s the whole ecosystem of this school, this town, these kids. Watching Dazed and Confused feels akin to stepping in a time machine and stepping out in a place that is so alien to a boy from Yorkshire growing up in the ’90s that the thrill of it all is impossible to ignore. It helps that the performances are uniformly excellent, from both future stars and one-film-wonders alike, and Linklater’s script is witty, sharp and warm throughout.
Despite underperforming at the box office, Dazed and Confused has enjoyed a second life as a cult classic because it somehow feels incredibly specific but also universal all at once. It perfectly captures the feeling of teenage ennui that comes with desperately feeling like you should be doing something exciting, but not having the means to make it happen, of forging relationships that seems intense and evergreen at the time but that soon dissipate and eventually disappear entirely, of being young and carefree, with your whole life ahead of you and a desire to break free of small town restraints, unreasonable teachers and nagging parents. Sure, it’s wistful nostalgia, but it’s also straight from the heart – one of the greatest teen movies of them all.
