The protagonists of this Generation X gabfest analyze each word they utter like lovesick computers, greedily breathing in the oxygen of their anxieties while the audience feels like it's choking in an atmosphere of carbon monoxide.
At an eatery, struggling actress Suzanna (Heather Graham) tries wheedling commitment out of preppie author Dodger (Jamie LeGros). During the course of this date, she sneaks off to phone ex-love Charles (Esai Morales) while Dodger calls his previous distraction, Alicia (Sarah Trigger). At a pool
hall, part-time hustler Charles impresses film student Michelle (Sheryl Lee) with his moves. Meanwhile, Michelle's on-again-off-again beau Robert (James Marshall) is taken aback by shocking news from live-in lover Alicia who reveals she's pregnant, and that Robert is the probable father. As these
entanglements spin out of control, two single fellas, Jake (Balthazar Getty) and David (Alexis Arquette), cruise L.A. with the latter advising the former to stop pining for his unrequited love object. At the climax, these star-crossed couples wind up at the same hamburger joint where they attempt
to unravel their former affairs and sew up their present involvements. Picked up by two Manhattan-bound young women, Jake and David head for love-connections in the Big Apple. The final lineup: Suzanna winds up with Dodger, Charles with Michelle, and Alicia with Robert.
What does DON'T DO IT tell us about young moderns? (1)That viewers should spot the title on the video box and consider it an admonishment not to watch. (2) That infidelity is an epidemic among the college-age crowd. (3) That if these airheaded characters represent the writers, musicians, and
filmmakers of the future, the arts are in big trouble.
So ineluctably self-enraptured are the characters and so unceasingly self-adoring are the performers, that REALITY BITES and BEFORE SUNRISE seem masterpieces of depth and candor in comparison. Underlying the writer-director's lack of insight and nuclear cuteness is his immaturity, which reaches a
nadir when Dodger barfs all over trouble-making teenagers. Giving romantic comedy a black eye, this puerile artistic filibuster is unrelieved by even one witty line of dialogue.
Artistically stale and embryonic at the same time, DON'T DO IT suggests that these characters could only find happiness as onanistic dual personalities; self-love is its own reward.(Violence, sexual situations, extreme profanity.) leave a comment
