Suspend your disbelief and enjoy

Rating: 8/10 (3 July 2005)

From a cynical viewpoint, you could say that this is just "Friends" with great music, near-profanity, and sex. There's nothing wrong with that perspective, but you'd be missing out on a treat. An overly sugary treat (like the brownies in the film), but with some actual nutrition within. If nothing else, you get to see some now-successful actors in some of their earliest work.
I randomly found this film on the TV this morning, and I couldn't look away. The angle to this "I found family" film is that it starts with what most films take half of their time to get to: the failure that transforms the characters. Right off the bat, the misfit loner takes money that either belongs to the manager, the store, or both, and loses it gambling in Atlantic City. Here's one of the things that works: the manager doesn't turn him in, or beat him up (at least not until an hour into the film). He makes him sit on the couch!! Yes, there are stereotypes, and shallow ones at that, and still there is some character transformation during the course of the story. The saving grace is the music, which for 1995 was pretty daring. And everyone works their issues out somehow, i.e., we don't really get to see how, we just get the headlines. The exposition is predictable and predictably presented: for the most part, the characters announce to each other what's happened. A few times, they do it right to the camera.
It still works, somehow. Of course it has a happy ending. And there's a very Friends-like dance scene, but not in some fountain, it's on the roof of the store, and it's not at the beginning, it's at the end. Like refined sugar, this kind of treat isn't bad for you in moderation.