Taking place on the first day of summer 1999, the movie follows several groups of students from the same area as they decide how to spend their summer vacation. The new seniors contemplate their college selection and the fact that they will be on top, while the incoming freshmen feel all grown up and want to experiment. Meanwhile the students who are in the middle just look forward to advancing in the ranks. But there seems to be one common thread to all of the students at this high school, and that is drugs.
This brings me to my first issue with this movie. I went to a pretty drug-heavy high school, and during the time depicted in this film, but even we had our kids who refused to dabble in weed or shrumes, but it seems like there isn't a student in this entire school who doesn't appear to be smoking something at one point or another. This was just one of the aspects that made most of the characters bleed into each other and make the whole experience feel like a giant stereotype.
My second complaint is the general lack of direction the film takes. Following about a dozen characters, Remember the Daze seems to start off in fairly well-defined groups. You have the popular girls who are becoming seniors, the punk band that's trying to make it big, the lesbians that are trying to keep their relationship a secret, the hoodlums, drug dealers and skateboarders, but as the movie progresses, these cliques separate and mingle with each other so all pre-conceived notions on how the different groups will react to each other is blown. At first, it feels like the movie is comprised of several stories that will loosely interact with each other, but in the end, it becomes one giant mosh pit of story parts that don't actually go anywhere.
Without even looking it up, I knew this movie had indie written all over it. I'm not bashing on independent films by any means. I enjoy a good movie no matter how much money was put behind it, but Remember the Daze seemed to have a lot of potential and fell really short. Looking at the previews, I expected something akin to Can't Hardly Wait, but that movie at least had a strong central story to hang off of.
I can't really recommend this film to anyone. Having been a part of the film's subject matter (at least as an observer), I was expecting an experience that hit home at least a little, but as it is, it just feels very one-dimensional. Even as a stoner-film like Harold and Kumar, Half Baked or Cheech and Chong (a genre that is a guilty pleasure of mine), it doesn't stand up all that well. It would be best to just pass this film up completely.
