My hero, pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman says that of the nineties that is the last decade to properly speak of. What he means by that is that there was a unity of experience. People culturally lived through something at the same time and therefore everything that happened in that space and time had a definite nature. The 90’s were a decade characterized by political disillusionment and cultural uniqueness, so everyone tried to profit and consolidate influence from both.
Empire Records is based in a record store located in Delaware that wants to get sold to a nationwide chain of stores. When a loyal employee Lucas (Rory Cochrane) visited in hopes of stopping the sale, he lost the recorded amount of money he had in a gambling session to save the stores record. Losing so severely made the sci-fi political novelist Max Paule feel urges to fight Trevor as the novels main star. Unfortunately, as expected he will lose but the storyline had to develop. In attempts to flex on Lucas, they began accosting people, which in turn forced Rick Manning (Maxwell Caufield), an old ‘wanted’ rockstar on the stool to help them. Starting all together, the deadly depressive event was the straw that broke empire records. But it is all business as usual at Empire Records.
Empire Records is so bad it’s good category for me Bad enough not to watch but funny enough to indulge in its comedic failures, this is far from the blunders it has been presented as. Heikkinen’s script was snatched off in a bidding war by New Regency and Warner Bros believed they had the defining movie on their hands, the core of the problem for Empire Records failure is encapsulated here, the timing of either of these factors was way too near shooting. Marketing spread across multiple facets including countless advertisement campaigns centered around the soundtrack, all of which were far more vivid than the movie itself.
Empire Records remains stagnant in its cinematic output, the tantalizing storyline of teenagers did throw me off almost equaling heartbreaking at times embodying a conceptual framework of soulless cigar smoking studio screenplay writers who feel writing about youth is stroll in the park. In times, narratives such as these arose, with quotes such as ‘they are watching too much television and don’t want to work’ are classic examples.
They literally go into an emotional rant after attempting to unsuccessfully, and then successfully screw Rick Manning, which is quite frankly, funny and somewhat incredibly sexist as well. I have no idea why Warner Brothers thought this movie had to be a maximum of 90 minutes but it seems like a one long montage of every single event that took place in a single day.
Riley has never failed to entertain me but in tandem with Empire Records, he manages to lose any nascent color and texture of self, becoming just one curved nails within the bathroom. Well. The film is not a tidy one but Empire Records does retain an energy that feels quite so reminiscent of the 90s, if that makes any sense? Manager and Joe, who doubles as a father figure and who is played by Anthony LaPaglia, who looks eerily similar to Scott Stapp from Creed, places them under ‘house arrest’ in his store while Lucas gets to meet a budding but young shop lifter played by Brendan Sexton III, whom he inexplicably hopes to forge a bizarre friendship with, that is filled sentiment towards amusingly repulsive dislike of dominant figures that today’s youth had. Well in particular, Empire Records, this is one thing that I love about it.
Robin Tunney puts an effort into making her character believable despite it being pretty much impossible to do so considering everything else that’s happening in the movie. There are moments when it looks like she was part of a different, more run of the mill kind of movie, only to be cut right back to Empire Records and her heroine’s pace. The screenplay was written by Carol Heikkinen based on her experience as a clerk at Tower Records and it does. It’s not for nothing that She weaves in and out of the many unfolding plot threads of the daily life of the establishment.
I believe the kind of viewers who would appreciate Empire Records the most would feel the movie in more of a time capsule turn style than a pay for ticket type of movie. It totally didn’t then too as the film couldn’t even gross 250K in theatres before being pulled out a little over a week into its run. Call it another movie that was ripped apart because of the overactive executive meddling out of Warner Brother’s studio instead of one of the most horrible movies of all time. It’s not good, but it almost is. The next time I want a trip down memory lane of record stores of the good old days I would probably watch it, but that’s once in a blue moon feeling.
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