Review of The Doom Generation (1995) by Allan C — 05 Jun 2015

Riding on the coattails of the wave of Quentin Tarantino pop culture obsessed, ultraviolent crime film copycats, this film fits squarely in the lower tier end of the copycats. Part of Gregg Araki's "Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy," the film does have it's defenders, but I found it pretentious and overly mannered.

Following the road movie map laid out by "Natural Born Killers" a teen couple, James Duval and Rose McGowan, hook up (literally and figuratively) with a homicidal criminal, Johnathon Schaech, and then set out on a violent road trip filled with a cast annoyingly quirky characters.

Quite similar to "SFW," which I did like but was also pretty on-the-nose with it's message about media and violence, but that film had some characters at the heart of it who I really cared about.

This film, however, had uninteresting and underdeveloped characters who had a "look" but no substance. I'd say that "Love and a .45" is another film that came out around this time who's story was not that distinguished from other ultraviolet young lovers on the run films, but was made a strong film by have well developed lead characters.

I did enjoy seeing Lauren Tewes and Christopher Knight as newscasters though and Parker Posey brought some life to the film with her bit part.