Synopsis
A small circle of friends suffering from post-collegiate blues must confront the hard truth about life, love and the pursuit of gainful employment. As they struggle to map out survival guides for the future, the Gen-X quartet soon begins to realize that reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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Cast
- Winona RyderLelaina Pierce
- Ethan HawkeTroy Dyer
- Janeane GarofaloVickie Miner
- Steve ZahnSammy Gray
- Ben StillerMichael Grates
- Swoosie KurtzCharlane McGregor
- Harry O'ReillyWes McGregor
- Susan NorfleetHelen Anne Pierce
- Joe Don BakerTom Pierce
- Renée ZellwegerTami
Recommendations
- 100
Entertainment Weekly
Ryder, good as she was in The Age of Innocence, gives her first true star performance here. Beneath her crisp, postfeminist manner, Lelaina is bristling with confusion, and Ryder lets you read every crosscurrent of temptation and anxiety, the way her tentative search for love slowly grows into a restless hunger. Yearning, hilarious, lost within their precocious self-awareness, these slackers have soul. - 90
The New York Times
It takes a spectacular cast to pull off this kind of meandering romantic comedy, and Reality Bites couldn't have done better. - 78
Austin Chronicle
It's Stiller's knowledgeable use of these smaller touches that (along with the excellent cast -- it's great to see Winona relinquishing period gowns and back where she can do some real damage) pushes the film along a solid, fresh line and toward its admittedly Hollywood conclusion. Stiller and company imbue their film with an honest, sarcastic wit that's all too familiar: apparently, somebody's been filming our lives. Does this mean we'll all be getting royalties? - 75
Rolling Stone
By spinning something fresh out of something familiar, Reality Bites scores the first comedy knockout of the new year. It also brings out the vibrant best in Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke as friends who resist being lovers, makes a star of Janeane Garofalo as their tart-tongued buddy and puts Ben Stiller on the map as a director. - 60
Empire
A surprisingly sweet romantic comedy debut from Ben Stiller. - 50
Chicago Sun-Times
The performances are all just fine; I wish they'd been at the service of another movie. - 50
TV Guide Magazine
In fact, it's often genuinely funny--but it's still an establishment picture pretending it's not. - 40
Time Out
There's probably a moderate little romantic comedy crying to get out here, but the film's vain striving for casual hip proves suffocatingly obtrusive.
