An elegant portrayal of the mundane.

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2005)

This movie is more of a quirky comedy than a laugh-out-loud comedy. The very fact that it is so mundane and has so many awkward silences make it very purely human. This is the sort of realism that most mainstream movies avoid like the plague. Jim Jarmusche uses it, on the other hand, to create wonderfully relatable encounters that emphasize that we are all human, and we all share universal cultural references. The interweaving of dialogue and character backgrounds and actions give a sense of continuity with enough variation to exercise your memory- but not overexert it- both for earlier dialogues and for that leftover trivia from highschool science classes. If nothing else, its a real treat to see pop icons sitting around like the rest of us, and evoking the same delightful chit chat that we get with friends. Its nothing brilliant, but its positively priceless.