The life of Lelaina, a young smart and ambitious girl, who after graduating navigate through life, searching for work with her friends, as she falls in love with her roommate, but she can't reveal her feelings, has been changed completely, when she works as a videographer at a reality shop.
It's a good example of an anti-establishment comedy crippled by a seeming desire to infatuate the establishment itself. What Reality Bites needs most is a good bite. From reality.
The best -- the brilliant -- bits of Reality Bites etch in epigram, anecdote and brittle, dazzling dialogue the inner life of young people who want desperately to believe but haven't decided in what.
Gone is the fearless savagery Stiller smuggled into his TV series. Stuck between slacker and attacker, he settles for something curiously inert, slavishly mainstream and so hopelessly phony its own characters might make fun of it between bong rips.
However conventional Reality Bites resolves to be, it is always engaging. Best of all, Ryder has her greatest role since Heathers, once again proving herself a seriously funny young actress.
The screenplay by newcomer Helen Childress falls back on familiar formulas too often, but first-time director Ben Stiller keeps the action fast and involving even when you can't help guessing what the next story twist will be.
When the movie is over, you don't feel as if you had shared the experience of a new generation; you feel puzzled and vaguely crummy, as if you had just read a solemn news-magazine cover story about it.
Ryder and Hawke bring crucial authenticity to their roles with effortless appeal. You'll find yourself wanting more of these characters than the movie gives you.
