Metropolitan (1990)

Location: Home
Seen Before: No
Rating: 4.5

What really drew me to and interested me while watching Whit Stillman's first feature is that while his independent contemporaries Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino, and Richard Linklator were busy drafting up screenplays glorifying the slacker lifestyle, Stillman aimed for the complete antithesis. His characters are stuck-up, upper class, opinionated Manhattan young men and women who turn out to be a lot of fun to watch.

They never come off as superior to the viewer, as Whitman knows his film would fail if he portrayed them in such a manner. They're ridiculous and a blast to laugh at. Kudos to the screenplay for letting the romance (or lack there of) between Audrey and Tom unfold in a way that dodges all of the bullets. It's never in your face, but instead just peeking from around the corner. Perhaps my single gripe are some of the scenes that hardly have time to get off of the ground before they end--just getting in a joke.

A wonderful little film that Baumbach was trying to make for years until he finally got out Squid and the Whale.