Adapted by Eric Bogosian from his stage play, subUrbia follows the alienated, angst-ridden, and collapsing world of five friends over the course of one night as they meet up with a former buddy of theirs who is now a successful rock star. Twenty-year-old Jeff (Ribisi) is the de facto ringleader and conscience of the group, if only by virtue of his sluggish collegiate career and idealistic ambitions. His girlfriend Sooze (Carey) is a budding performance artist and painter with dreams of New York City in her eyes, while her friend Bee-Bee, a quietly damaged girl fresh out of the bottle, seems content to have dreams at all. Besotted party animal Buff (Zahn) and the alcoholic, racist, ex-Air Force thug Tim (Katt) round out the motley group which spends most of its time hanging outside a convenience store run by a Pakistani couple, Nazeer and Pakeesa (Naidu and Shoaib). When word spreads that old pal-turned-rock star Pony (Bartok) might be dropping by later after his concert, everyone assembles outside the Circle A to shoot the shit and Wait for the Man. Pony does indeed show up – in a stretch limo, and with slinky publicist Erica (Posey) in tow – but far from being the friendly reunion they had in mind, the evening soon degenerates into an emotional free-for-all, with Pony questioning his good fortune, Sooze questioning her feelings for Jeff, and Jeff questioning everything he can get his mind around. Meanwhile, Tim is baiting Nazeer with racist remarks, Bee-Bee’s grip on sobriety is slipping, and Buff is running out of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Linklater’s (and Bogosian’s) running commentary on disaffected suburban youth is that it doesn’t bore you half as much as it should. Linkater’s fluid direction (and Lee Daniel’s eerily lit nighttime cinematography) keeps the petty mutterings of Generation Beer! at bay long enough to develop some tangentially interesting storylines, but with a running time of over two hours, the film could have lost a solid 30 minutes and been all the more tighter for it. As Jeff, Ribisi is the spearhead of rational thought (he’s also a dead ringer for Green Day’s Billie Joe, but that’s neither here nor there), and there’s precious little of that to go round. With a best friend who’s a not-so-closeted racist and another who spends 90% of the film in an alcoholic haze, his late-breaking epiphany of pulling up stakes and heading east with Sooze feels less like an act of romantic courage than common sense. Set in the fictional town of Burnfield, subUrbia could take place in virtually any urban-lite zone (it was shot here in Austin), which makes it all the more nightmarishly disturbing for its realism: waves of semi-talented young wastrels, idly killing time, never noticing that time fights back.
This article appears in September 29 • 2006.