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copyright ©1999-2003
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
It's the early 90s in Seattle, and in a cheery little apartment
building, the mostly twenty-something, single inhabitants flirt, date,
mate, and grouse about their inability to find that perfect someone with
whom to spend the rest of their days. Steve is an urban planner working
on a plan for a Supertrain to alleviate the city's traffic problems;
when he meets pretty environmentalist Linda at a club one night, he's
instantly smitten. The feeling is basically mutual, but both are so
caught up in playing the dating game that despite the fact that they may
very well be perfect for each other, they nearly sabotage their chances
at making it ever work. Meanwhile, Steve's ex Janet waits tables at a
nearby coffeeshop while she saves up money, and toys with the idea of
going to architecture school. Janet is involved in a messy on-again,
off-again relationship with her neighbor Cliff, an appallingly oblivious
rockstar wannabe who doesn't appreciate spunky Janet half as much as she
adores him. Yet another neighbor, Debbie, takes a more proactive
approach to dating when she decides to take advantage of a gift her
friends once gave her as a joke, and cashes in that gift certificate for
a video dating service.
Review
"Somewhere around 25, bizarre becomes immature." So says
Bridget Fonda as Janet Livermore in Singles, Cameron Crowe's look
at life and love amongst Gen-X-ers in grunge-era Seattle. Back when I
was in my early twenties, Janet's fears pretty well summed up my own:
this, then, is the only rationalization I can provide for why I
auditioned for MTV's The Real World shortly before my
twenty-fifth birthday (Hawaii -- just to further date me). It was a
rather pathetic (and thankfully, unsuccessful) last stab at the
wackiness and frivolity allotted to youth before I officially became
Old. Well into my decrepit late twenties now, I can look back on those
years of post-college, I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing-with-my-life anxiety,
and have a good chuckle. Singles doesn't feel quite as relevant
to my life as it did back then, but I still love it. The dialogue is
funny; the characters, most notably Matt Dillon's delightfully
dumb-as-rocks Cliff, are pretty damn charming; the movie is whimsically
edited as a series of quirky short sketches focusing on different events
in each character's life. And the music instantly throws me back into
deep high school/college nostalgia for flannel shirts, and all that
angst-ridden, Seattle-sound grunge (the members of Pearl Jam even have
small, very amusing roles in Singles, as the bandmates of lead
singer Cliff). It's not a mind-blowing Fine Film by any means, but
there's something about this movie that just strikes a chord with me.
And every time I watch it, Singles gives me the fuzzy-warm
smilies inside.
—reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
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