Pretentious art-house drivel.

Rating: 4/10 (8 January 2005)

Jim Jarmush directs this series of collected shorts about coffeehouse patrons. I was looking forward to this one, but came away from it very disappointed. I'm a little tired of movies which are celebrated by critics as profound cinema, but what I actually find to be nothing more than pretentious art-house drivel, striving to be profound. And true, some of the sequences in Coffe and Cigarettes are funny, and sometimes interesting (the Jack/Meg White thing was amusing), but overall, no one talks about anything remotely interesting.
While I thought the cinematography was done quite nicely, this kinds of subject matter things worked well in the 60s simply because they were something different, but have little effect today because everyone just thinks they're being profound for the sake of profound when, in reality, it is nothing more than nonsense. I don't care about one sequence after another of people in coffeeshops yabbering on about coffee and cigarettes and any other meaningless bits of conversation (I know, that's the point). And, after recently watching 'Slacker,' I'm not sure I can take much more of it. (Although, the only time I really enjoyed it was with 'Night on Earth,' which was ironic comedy).
Although, I may be the atypical reaction. I'm not sure. I definitely can't say how others will feel about this. Obviously, indy fans and those who don't mind movies without a distinct plot may be willing to give it a try. As for fans of other Jarmush movies, I don't know what your reaction might be to this.