# S.L.C. Punk! (1999)

### reviewed by
Susan Granger

http://www.speakers-podium.com/susangranger.

    Susan Granger's review of "SLC Punk!" (Sony Pictures Classics)

If you're interested in this satirical film about teenage defiance, you'd better plan to see it quick because, when I went to the theater, there were exactly three people in the audience! Writer/director James Merendino chronicles the early '80s transformation of Stevo - played by Matthew Lillard ("Wing Commander") - from a Dungeons and Dragons geek and academic genius to a hard-core, blue-haired punk, whose ambition in college is to get "a 4.0 in damage," rather than to follow his former hippie father's example and go to Harvard Law School. Set in suburban, Mormon-colonized Salt Lake City, Utah, the chaotic - obviously loosely autobiographical - story is hard to follow at times but that seems to be the object of Merendino's hyperactive style. After all, as Stevo explains at length, the anarchic spirit is the essence of the punk movement. There's much more talk than action. In fact, there's more talk than even the most dedicated movie-goer can sit through comfortably. Long, tiresome, and repetitious talk. As colorful co-starring characters, Michael A. Goorjean plays Heroin Bob, who boasts an anti-drug attitude and an aversion to needles; Til Schweiger is the quick-tempered braggart of the group who has converted his home into an electronics warehouse, courtesy of a generous settlement from his parents' plane crash; and Annabeth Gish is the head shop owner whose hair color changes with each scene. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "SLC Punk" is a floundering 4 - unless you're really into an aimlessly twisted parody on the punk side.

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