Sleep With Me

Sometimes, on Netflix, I pick an actor or actress whom I loved in one movie, but haven't really seen in anything else since, and check out what else they've done. It's kind of an entertaining thing to do, especially if it's an actor whom you've come to identify very strongly with the particular role you first saw him in. I think that this movie ended up on my queue because I had a HUGE crush on Eric Stoltz's character in Some Kind of Wonderful when I was a kid. I then encountered him again in Killing Zoe and The Passion of Ayn Rand. Sleep With Me though, was a two-for-one - not only does is star Eric Stoltz, but it also features his co-star from Some Kind of Wonderful, Craig Sheffer! What a deal! And it gets even better! You know who else is in this movie? We've got Meg Tilly, who from the looks of her, must be Jennifer Tilly's sister. And we've also got Joey Lauren Adams and Parker Posey. And that's not all! Quentin Tarantino shows up too! And those are just the ones I can name! The rest of the cast is composed of eerily familiar faces, people you know you've seen on an episode of some old tv show, or some really bad late night tv movie. It's amazing. I have no idea what all these people are doing in this movie - especially because - are you ready for this? The movie is TERRIBLE.

Apparently there were like six people writing the script. And you can tell. I'm thinking they did it stoned at a party. Because the beginning is doing that old standby of GenX flicks, the person walking around with a videocamera collecting testimonials (why were people so into that in the 90s?), and then we've got some random narrative interspersed to fill in plot detail (Fuck, he thought. Why did I do that?). And then there'll be some long scenes of other minor characters discussing what's going on. The plot is pretty basic - Craig Sheffer is madly in love with his BFF's wife, played by Eric Stoltz and Meg Tilly. Their other zombies-from-B-movie friends are the standard confused Gen-X crowd, all involved in miserable marriages as well, mostly because they're emotionally immature, narcissistic assholes. Anyhow, Craig has the hots for Meg. She kinda gets off on this fact and sort of teases him about it, tormenting him by telling him that she'd also had a crush on him. Oh no! Missed opportunity! Is it really too late? Fueled with this new information, he decides to make a move on her. DRA-MA ensues. Well, kinda. The film gets a bit caught up in the Gen-X ethos, getting Parker Posey topless, and finding a way to cram in a few charming songs performed by Joey Lauren Adams.

This movie is awful. But if you're feeling nostalgic for those GenX days and can't bring yourself to watch Reality Bites again, this one might do it for you. It's not quite bad enough to be ridiculously entertaining, but there's something kind of bizarrely fascinating about the movie. It's such a cobbled together piece of crap. Quentin Tarantino, however, is hilarious. But just when you think he's the best thing in the entire movie, you get the very last scene, which is so absolutely audaciously ridiculously appropriate that you almost don't regret the hour and a half of your life you just wasted.