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Okay, here's the deal. Just flippin' through the aisles at Rick's Live Bait and Video Rental one day, I came upon this little movie, Empire Records. Honestly, the cover caught my eye, 'cause I saw Liv Tyler and Renee Zellweger on it. Then I noticed Anthony LaPaglia's name in the fine print, who's enthralling to watch, especially when he gets exasperated. So I grabbed it and shuffled up to the counter. I couldn't have been more pleased than if I'd caught that big ol' granddaddy bass out of Carver Lake. Quite simply, this movie is about 24 hours in the life of a record store, one of the few independent music shops left in America. We start at the close of business one night, and Lucas, the clerk in charge, pockets the day's receipts and motors off to Atlantic City, where he loses the whole wad. Cut to the next morning, and LaPaglia, as the manager of the store, is popping his corn at our young gambler for not depositing the cash. It's also Rex Manning Day, meaning that former teen throb Rex Manning is coming in to sign autographs to celebrate his newest album. And there's a threat that Empire is about to be taken over by MusicTown, one of the nasty chain record stores, and everyone will end up as canned toast. Moreover, the band of teenage employees all have their own problems going on. Director Allan Moyle has crafted one heckuva fun flick from Carol Heikkinen's fresh script -- one of those select few that can balance more than a few story lines and still make perfect sense. Tyler plays Corey, the All-American girl, with only one accomplishment standing between herself and college: a deflowering at the hands of pop star Rex. Her friend Gina is coping with a bad-girl reputation, and striving to find her worth in it all. A.J., the artist of the group, is passing on college and staying at Empire. Debra has made an attempt at suicide over the loss of a guy, and has shaved her head. Mark is just pleasantly stoned and plans to stay that way while he starts his band, the one he has named Marc. Warren, the shoplifter, gets busted and is waiting on justice to arrive. All of these stories are interwoven in much the way you'd expect, but they all underscore the single theme of happiness and survival. Will they make it? Will Empire make it or be absorbed into the corporate dreck? Will these kids realize their dreams, or even more, are their dreams really worth realizing? This movie has a nice underground following, but it's a shame it didn't see more light before it hit tape, 'cause it's one of the better efforts aimed at the teen audience. Sometimes, it has the feel of a grunge-pop Breakfast Club, (that's a good thing) as each kid stands as an archetype of a certain group, brought together, working together. How they get along and work together is a mystery sometimes, but then again, isn't being friends a delicate balance between love and hate, trust and suspicion, tolerance and impatience? Usually. Here, it's played out over one day, in a hectic pace of everyday life, and it works almost perfectly. All the performances are superb, but pay close attention to Maxwell Caulfield as Manning, pop music superstar and world-class jerk. He is a creepy mixture of Rick Astley and Bobby Sherman, too hopelessly old to be relevant, but still crooning his tapwater music to the hard-drinking public. Tyler and Zellweger are great, Ethan Edwards is funny as Mark the Stoner, and Anthony LaPaglia gets more than ample occasion to get angry, and he does his best acting when he's angry. If you haven't seen Empire Records, give it a try. If you've seen it, see it again. A killer soundtrack, a handful of nifty performances, and some dang funny scenes make it a disc worth spinning.
Get "reel" soon,
See past Alternative Medicine columns: A Christmas Story | To Kill A Mockingbird | I Wanna Hold Your Hand | Kingpin | Joe Versus the Volcano | The Commitments | Indian Summer | The Big Lebowski | Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man | The Texas Chainsaw Massacre | Empire Records | That Thing You Do! | The Ten Commandments | The Third Man | Waiting for Guffman
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