Kathleen Robertson in Splendor (1999)

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For fans of writer/director Gregg Araki, Splendor is a far cry from his teen-angst-riddled Gen-X flicks. (Most notably, the terrible trio of Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere…) Instead of the “Devil-May-Care” attitude we all came to realize with those particular films, Splendor takes on a completely different face, basically becoming a formula romantic comedy with entirely predictable results.

The movie is all about “Veronica” (Kathleen Robertson; Scary Movie 2, Dog Park), who up until this point in her life, has been a fairly boring Midwestern type of girl. When she moves to L.A., she meets up with two polar opposites (we know this because it’s delineated by their names for easier consumption… How clever…) “Abel” and “Zed” who both show an interest in her. Thus, she proceeds to bang the both of them.

Abel (Johnathon Schaech; The Forsaken, After Sex) is a freelance writer complete with all the sensitivity that a woman could ever hope for. We know this because he wears glasses. (Far be it for Araki to color-code the whole damned schmear…) Zed (Matt Keeslar; Scream 3, Psycho Beach Party) is a Neanderthal full of animal lust and hard-living attitude. No wonder. He’s the drummer (isn’t it always the drummer?) of a punk band.

Essentially, the story begins to devolve when both the fellers move in with Veronica, in spite of their initial reaction to being two individual points on a love triangle. They become friends and everything seems to go okay until Veronica turns up preggers and for some reason doesn’t know who the father is. Go take a paternity test, you know?

And besides… What self-respecting dude would be sporting wood on a broad for sloppy seconds without a cock-coat? They may be pals but I don’t know any two guys who would do that… So how did she end up pregnant in the first place?

Not that it matters. Enter the third man, Eric Mabius, who is a producer/director for the series that Veronica just landed a gig on. Naturally, like every three-legger in the flick, he falls for the babe and offers to marry her, regardless of her pregnant status. That’s about the point I lost consciousness…

I really don’t “get” this “Gen X” crap, to be perfectly honest. On one hand, Splendor tries (Really hard, to be sure.) to be a screwball comedy. However, Araki just can’t seem to get away from his “pseudo-hip” dialogue and situational irony and it just falls flat. No one in his movies gives a shit about anything that any NORMAL person would ordinarily give said “shit” about and it just seems, well, trite. Not to mention that it takes the steam and passion out of everything he does. By definition, I fall into the “Gen X” category but unfortunately I don’t seem to fall into those ideals, so none of this crap appeals to me. Sorry, Araki but I think your movies are vastly overrated and essentially targeted toward the “ultra-hip,” fad-following, Rolling Stone-reading, Baa-Baa Black Sheep, different-for-the-sake-of-being-different crowd. Sure, someone needs to make movies for those particular people and Araki is there for them at every turn. I just don’t like it. D.

Nudity Report: Araki really dropped the ball, here. There could have been rampant nudity but instead, he just implied that everyone had sex instead of actually showing it. Boo. Hiss.

Critics’ Vote: Apollo scored it a 55/100. eFilmCritic gave it 4/4 stars and filmcritic.com has it at 3 ½ out of four. One certainly notices the disparity of scoring, here…

IMDb Summary: 5.7/10

Box Office: Just over $45,000, which barely paid for the sashimi catering…

DVD Info: 1.85 : 1 aspect ratio, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround, French, Spanish, Portuguese and English subtitles, the latter being there in case you don’t speak “Hip.”


Written by: Vance Moravian