A weird movie that somehow works

Rating: Null/10 (13 January 2002)

I was reading all the comments given to Empire Records and I have to say that they sum it up. Empire Records seems to have nothing going for it and then suddenly it turns into this guilty pleasure that you can't get enough of. When I was in high school my entire class knew Empire Records off by heart. I'm not talking that they could speak along with the movie, we could do it sitting in class, and we did, for fun. The acting isn't great, the story is unoriginal, it all turns out in a sickening saccharine way, but for some reason it grabs teenagers and sucks them in. I think it's because all the characters, their clothes and lives and jobs and words and music are what teenagers want to be. I think it deserves some credit for that, and for Lucas, who remains one of my favorite fantasies to this day.