SLC Punk
Yesterday's radicals are today's mainstream -- or as a former hippie tells his
punked-out son, "I didn't sell out, I bought in." That's essentially the anthem
of James Meredino's SLC Punk. The SLC in question is Salt Lake City,
capital of Mormon Utah. The punks are a pair of hair-challenged transplants who
seek to define themselves against the waning 1980s and the constraints of their
stodgy surroundings.
What begins as a poetically offbeat comedy full of energy and verve turns
woefully mundane as the protagonists become introspective and enlightened.
Matthew Lillard and Michael A. Goorjian play the colorful thrashers; they've
just graduated college, where they failed to bring down "the system," and are
now content to shelve themselves as the ushers of anarchy. There's not too much
to their caricatures except a smattering of acerbically witty diatribes and a
handful of raucous misadventures, each instigated by drugs and resulting in
physical altercation. Lillard, who brought his likable, frenetic presence to
Scream and She's All That, is pretty much on the money here. The
rest of the cast (including Annabeth Gish and Christopher McDonald as Lillard's
dad) get some gleefully black moments too, and the edgy, in-your-face
soundtrack is one infectious adrenaline rush. It's just too bad that SLC
Punk has to get sober, serious, and self-reflective.
-- Tom Meek
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