Dan Aykroyd Movie:

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		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
Writer-director Amy Heckerling has a way with teen comedies, from Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Clueless and now Loser. She manages to take the clichés of life in school and spin them into cinematic gold. Part of her secret is that she genuinely seems to respect all of her characters, even the unsavory ones. In Loser, Paul Tannek (Jason Biggs from American Pie) is a farm-town boy who's gotten himself a scholarship to a fancy Manhattan college. He's worried that he's not going to fit in with the sophisticated city crowd. Well, he's right to worry. He doesn't fit in, which his three dorm-mates are quick to remind him. The only person he can talk to is Dora (Mena Suvari from American Beauty), a cocktail waitress-student who's having an affair with a pretentious lit teacher (Greg Kinnear).

Biggs is great in this movie, the perfect straight man, setting up jokes that wouldn't work without his reactions to them. In fact, the whole movie is so well-cast--Suvari is charming, Kinnear is entertainingly smug, the three dorm-mates are fun to dislike--that the actors, working in tandem with Heckerling, give a life to characters that in less talented hands would have been revealed as over-determined and exaggerated. Pardon the blurb, but it's true: Loser is a winner.--Andy Spletzer

The Loser [Region 2] Reviews:
I'm a Loser, Baby!
2008-01-02 - I like Amy Heckerling's approach a lot. The story line in her movies really doesn't matter much, it's the characters she builds that make her movies worthwhile and deserving of repeated viewings.

I just saw this flick again a few days ago (for about the 3rd time over the years) and I noticed things about the main and supporting characters I had not seen previously. The roommates are some of the greatest parodies on college ne'er-do-wells I've ever seen. And Professor Alcott is more deliciously evil the more you watch this movie.

I went to college a long time ago, but there are elements of the bad characters that do exist I remember, thankfully not so concentrated around one poor guy, but hey movies need to compress things.

The spoiled, self-centered, immoral, rationalizing roomies are hilarious and allow me to laugh even now about some of the stupid attitudes & affectations the "in crowd" had when I was in school. Their desperate clinging to the latest "cool" thing is very well done... look carefully at how glammed out these idiots are and think of how much time and effort some people spend trying to be hip and it just ends up making them look like complete a-holes to pretty much everyone including the people they are trying to impress.

So anyway, don't watch Amy Heckerling's movies for story or plot. Watch for the memorable characters (Spicoli, Cher, Professor Alcott, etc) and try not to act like them in real life or at least use them for comic relief when you encounter some their traits in others.

"Dust"???
2006-01-25 - Loser brings to the screen the story of a college freshman who does not fit in well with his peers nor with the city of NY as a whole.
Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari carry out their roles well, though by no means are these their best performances.

The major setbacks are in relation to:
1) Jason Biggs not portraying his character as being a "loser," as much as an average guy. Actually, he seemed to be the only "normal" one in the movie!
2) Mena Suvari looked like she is 14 years old and a student at junior high let alone college.
3) Greg Kinnear's (annoying) character OVERDOING it in trying to be conceded and obnoxious (it's a bit much).
4) The poor choice of an actor to play "Noah" who is not all man, if you catch my drift... Any particular reason for that?
5) The other two guys were just not interesting at all nor were they good actors, and all three of them were actually quite sad as opposed to "cool."

The setting, the acting, the plot and the humor are average, while the dialogues and the script are rather weak.
In a nutshell, it's probably not a movie you would want to add to your collection, but it will provide for an evening's entertainment, and that's about it. No masterpiece here.


Mildly Entertaining- Good Chemistry Between Biggs and Suvari
2005-08-20 - Although "Loser" is a solid effort and is generally enjoyable, it was certainly not what director Amy Heckerling needed at that point in her career. After the great success of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Clueless" she pretty much went in the director dumper with this one. Ironically the problem was not her directing but her writing. Solid production could not entirely compensate for this flawed screenplay because the flaws are in the characters themselves, they are simply not believable.

This is usually fatal because it is hard for viewers to care about characters with whom they cannot identify. Fortunately for writer Heckerling, director Heckerling cast the best two actors in "American Pie", Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, as her leads. They have such unexpectedly good chemistry together that you will yourself to believe in them, even if Paul is moronically nice and Dora is moronically moronic (her failure to connect the bad relationship dots for almost the entire film is not consistent with a character who is portrayed as extremely perceptive and self-aware). Suvari looks and even sounds like Jennifer Jason Leigh which may have you flashing back to "Fast Times".

Excellent performances by Biggs, Suvari, and Greg Kinnear (as Professor Alcott) save the day or at least salvage the film. They get little assistance from anyone else in Heckerling's cast (although Dan Ackroyd is decent in a small and very straight role) as the supporting players are either neutral or less than zero. Worst of all are they guys who play Paul's three roommates. They start out as typically "Party Hard" college students but overnight morph into date rape scum and academic blackmailers. Heckerling provides nothing to explain this transformation, which is especially strange because she includes early scenes intended to show that one of the roommates is sincerely trying to help Paul with his adjustment to college in the big city.

Heckerling based her "Clueless" screenplay on Jane Austin's "Emma". Franz Kafka is her reference point for "Loser"; a strange choice given Kafka famous line "women are traps which lie in wait for men everywhere, in order to drag them down into the finite". The choice of the Dora Diamond name is an obvious homage to Kafka's girlfriend Dora Dymant. The screenplay for "Loser" is not a total loss, it has good individual lines like: "I love self-loathing complaint rock you can dance to".

Perhaps the best scene is Heckerling's homage to the Berkeley fountain scene in "The Graduate" as the dejected Paul wonders around the city while the soundtrack plays Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair". The rest of the soundtrack is also good.

Apparently Heckerling could not resist shooting herself in the foot at the very end as she included on-screen notes documenting the comeuppance received by each of the bad characters. Not only is this tired and unoriginal ("American Graffiti" and "Animal House" made use of this along with a high school film I judged last spring) but the notes themselves are not even mildly amusing.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Cute remake of The Apartment
2005-04-05 - I caught this movie by accident at a neighborhood theater, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that good old Amy Heckerling had remade one of my favorites, The Apartment, with a dash of Ridgemont High added here and there. Maybe I'm biased because I know and love both of these films, but my guess is that Loser can stand on its own. Or maybe you should do a little homework and watch the original. It can only enhance the experience.

Sarcastically interesting and realistic.
2005-03-02 - ITS YOUR CLASSIC BAD GUY GOOD GUY - GOOD GUY SAVES GIRL.

THE major thumbs down about this movie was the "room mates" and the excess use of gutter language at times. What makes this a GOOD movie though is its realistic presentation of issues.

I find that the honesty between the characters personalities drove the storyline and made for an overall interesting movie with a sarcastic overtone about the worlds rejection of truth, purity and innocence, both displayed in the Professer and the "room mates".Also worthy of note is the confusion the misplaced "MAIDEN IN DISTRESS" suffers from.Which leaves the masculine viewer completly relating to the "Loser" who is clearly the hero of the story.

This would be a good movie to preach from. Leaving out comments made in the movie for SURE but by mainly pointing out the situations and CONSEQUENCES of substance abuse,the possible compromises that can be made all in the name of the $, amoung other youth issues also portrayed in the movie.

IF ANYTHING enjoy the movie, recieve its warm humor and FEEL driven to support the under dog or all round nice guy next time you meet one. WILD AT HEART indeed!

GS.