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Five high school students, all different stereotypes, meet in detention, where they pour their hearts out to each other, and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.
The Buckman family is a midwestern family all dealing with their lives: estranged relatives, raising children, pressures of the job, and learning to be a good parent and spouse.
Director:
Ron Howard
Stars:
Steve Martin,
Mary Steenburgen,
Dianne Wiest
5 guys in their 20's spend most of their time hanging out in a Diner. It's Christmas time in 1959, and the guys all begin to think it's about time they went about their lives without the comfort of the 'diner'. Written by
Colin Tinto <cst@imdb.com>
Barry Levinson had the main actors arrive in Baltimore a week before filming began to get to know each other and build rapport. Predictably, the young male actors went out on the town to clubs and tried to pick up women. Sometimes they would use bogus stories about what they were doing in Baltimore. Tim Daly says he came up with the most popular one, that they were engineers working on a rotating rooftop restaurant. See more »
Goofs
In the first diner scene with the roast beef sandwich, Shrevie takes the sandwich from Eddie but in the next camera cut, you can see Eddie has the sandwich back and is still eating it. See more »
Quotes
Timothy Fenwick, Jr.:
[to his older brother]
It's funny. You know, when I was a little kid I always wanted a brother. I told that to mom once and she said, "You have a brother". I said, "Oh, so that's who the asshole in the other bed is".
See more »
Crazy Credits
The end credits run as we hear another diner conversation between the guys. See more »
"Diner" is, as several other reviewers have noted, a thinking man's version of "American Graffiti". Its a more substantial and intelligent coming of age tale than that pop culture favorite. Despite being a huge critical hit when originally released, "Diner" seems to become more and more underrated with each passing year. Thats a shame, because its really a terrifically entertaining and well written film. Sure, there's not much of a plot to be had ultimately, but with characters and dialog this fantastic, thats more than acceptable. The film details a group of college buddies moving onto adulthood during the Christmas season in 1959 in Baltimore. It shows that, despite their aging, many of the characters still have a good amount of emotional maturing to do.
Its odd to see so many big stars in this film and realize they were all relatively unknown. Its no big surprise that they all became major Hollywood plays subsequently on the strength of this film, with many of them continuing to be big stars up to this day (Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin) and others unfortunately having their career dwindle (Steve Guttenberg and Mickey Rourke until his recent comeback). All of the actors give possibly their best performances in this film. The dialog about seemingly nothing was a big influence on many 90s productions as well, from Tarantino's films to "Seinfeld". Barry Levinson's direction is very good as well, keeping this at a quick pace. The only minor flaw is Mickey Rourke. Rourke is a great actor and does a good job here, but I disliked his sleazy character, and didn't find him sympathetic like the rest of the protagonists. Still, this is a truly great film. Anyone interested in getting into screen writing really needs to see this. (9/10)
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.
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"Diner" is, as several other reviewers have noted, a thinking man's version of "American Graffiti". Its a more substantial and intelligent coming of age tale than that pop culture favorite. Despite being a huge critical hit when originally released, "Diner" seems to become more and more underrated with each passing year. Thats a shame, because its really a terrifically entertaining and well written film. Sure, there's not much of a plot to be had ultimately, but with characters and dialog this fantastic, thats more than acceptable. The film details a group of college buddies moving onto adulthood during the Christmas season in 1959 in Baltimore. It shows that, despite their aging, many of the characters still have a good amount of emotional maturing to do.
Its odd to see so many big stars in this film and realize they were all relatively unknown. Its no big surprise that they all became major Hollywood plays subsequently on the strength of this film, with many of them continuing to be big stars up to this day (Kevin Bacon, Ellen Barkin) and others unfortunately having their career dwindle (Steve Guttenberg and Mickey Rourke until his recent comeback). All of the actors give possibly their best performances in this film. The dialog about seemingly nothing was a big influence on many 90s productions as well, from Tarantino's films to "Seinfeld". Barry Levinson's direction is very good as well, keeping this at a quick pace. The only minor flaw is Mickey Rourke. Rourke is a great actor and does a good job here, but I disliked his sleazy character, and didn't find him sympathetic like the rest of the protagonists. Still, this is a truly great film. Anyone interested in getting into screen writing really needs to see this. (9/10)