Movie Review : Empire Records (1995)

Pop culture critic and low-key idol of mine Chuck Klosterman said of the nineties that it was the last decade to properly speak of. What he meant by that is that there was a unity of experience. People culturally lived through the same thing at the same time and therefore, whatever happened in that space and time had coherent characteristics. The nineties were a time of youthful rebellion and cultural expansion, so everybody tried to make money and build legacy out of these two ideas.

For Reality Bites, it worked. For Empire Records, it was a disaster.

Empire Records tells the story of a struggling record store in Delaware about to sell to a nationwide chain, which inspires loyal employee Lucas (Rory Cochrane) to gamble away (and lost) he daily deposit in Atlantic City. The following day is quite an important one for the ailing store as washed out rock star Rick Manning (Maxwell Caufield) is scheduled for an in-store event. But Lucas pulled a stunt, Deb (Robin Tunney) tried to kill herself and so many other things are just out of control. Business as usual at Empire Records.

The idea of being "the voice of a generation"

This is not a good movie, but it’s nowhere near the fiasco it’s been accused of being. In order to understand why Empire Records bombed, you have to understand the context it was released in. There was a bidding war over Carol Heikkinen’s screenplay between New Regency and Warner Brothers, who were convinced they held the "new defining film of a generation". A splendid soundtrack was created to promote it, which ended up being a lot more successful and memorable than the movie itself.

I don’t know what Heikkinen's original vision was (the film was edited down by 40 minutes classic WB) , but Empire Records feels like it was written by a condescending, cigar smoking studio screenwriter who believes writing about youth is easy. "They don’t want to work and they're watching too much television" and whatnot. There are too many characters, it's never clear which one matters and which ones are mere support (they all seem to equally matter, to be honest) and nothing they say is clever.

There's this rivalry that devolves into a fistfight between Corey (Liv Tyler) and Gina (Rene Zellwegger) and until that point, I had no idea there was any tension between the two. They just emotionally explode after (unsuccessfully then successfully) trying to fuck Rick Manning, which is both alarmingly sexist and kind of hilarious. I have no idea why Warner Brothers thought this movie had to be maximum 90 minutes, but it feels like a long-ass montage of everything that happened over a busy day.

It doesn’t sound right, but it FEELS right

With that said, it's not all gloom and doom for Empire Records. It's not good, but it has an energy that feels very nineties if it makes any sense? Put under "house arrest" inside the store by manager and father figure Joe (an Anthony LaPaglia who awesomely looks like Scott Stapp from Creed), Lucas catches a young shoplifter (Brendan Sexton III) only to start an awkward friendship with him, which brims with the passive-aggressive disdain of authority young people had then. It’s one of the best things about Empire Records.

Robin Tunney's character also feels real in a way all the others doesn't as she's obviously going through some shit on a personal level. It also feels like she were in a different, more conventional movie at times, but her energy always levels and focuses the ongoing chaos at Empire Records. Carol Heikkinen based her screenplay on her time working at Tower Records and it shows. She goes back and forth between the bubbling storylines of the store in a way that feels alive and true.

*

I'm sure Empire Records works better today as this oddball time-capsule than it did then as a film you had to pay a theatre ticket to see. It totally didn’t then too as the film couldn't even gross 250K in theatres before being pulled out a little over a week into its run. Consider it another film butchered on the altar of Warner Brother's overbearing executives more than one of the worst movies of all time. It's not good, but it almost is. I might even revisit it whenever I feel nostalgic for record stores.

6.3/10

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