The Doom Generation

Let me start off with a summary from the video box:

This is the story about this hot chick and her loser boyfriend that begins one night at a nightclub where they listen to techno music. So anyway, they leave the club only to have this bleeding dude jump into the back of their car. The chick curses a lot and they visit many fast food restaurants, rob a convenience store and meet up with people.
Anyway, in the end, they all become way more than friends and wind up being chased by a bunch of crazy neo-nazi jocks who want to kill them when all they want to do is to ride off smoothly into the sunset eating Doritos.

Well, there you have it. What more is there to say?

That summary did miss some tiny details:

They kill pretty much everyone they run into.
In between killings, they stop and have sex in all combinations.
At their food stops, the always spend exactly $6.66
The three main characters are named (Xavier) Red, (Jordan) White, and (Amy) Blue.
It's supposed to be some kind of exaggeration of our corrupt society, ala Natural Born Killers. The landscape is populated with radioactive waste and such, the fast-food joints are neon hells populated by people in grotesque costumes. You get the picture.

NUDITY REPORT

Rose McGowan shows her breasts in several scenes, including a bathtub scene in excellent light.

She also shows her bum, but briefly, and in virtual darkness.

DVD info from Amazon.

no widescreen
no meaningful features

It seems to be posing as ultra-hip and above it all, but is actually nothing more than a mindlessly violent road trip movie. It really doesn't have any redeeming elements. The acting is very poor from two of the three leads. The storyline is filled with obvious symbolism (see above). There is no point. The characterizations are supposed to be some sorts of archetypes rather than real people. The dialogue is howlingly bad. There are no characters to like. The scenes are generally underlit. And the few moments that could have been competent are ruined with sophomoric exaggeration or pretension. The score is techno-punk. Do I need to go on?

The Doom Generation did sort of establish Rose McGowan as her generation's "rebel without a clue". Rosie established a wicked character in this film that had a certain underground anti-establishment cult appeal. Her famous tag line was, "eat my fuck", whatever that means. I guess it means "I don't know anything about anything, but I know I don't like what I have now". She developed something of a following among the goths, but that was seven years ago, and her career has progressed only fitfully.

The Critics Vote

General consensus: half of a star: Ebert 0/4, filmcritic.com 1.5/5

Rotten Tomatoes summary. Despite the harsh reviews from the major critics, the film has 53% positive reviews at RT

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 5.0/10

with their dollars: it grossed a quarter of a million in the USA.

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a D. It is a poorly written, poorly acted, poorly filmed movie, but some people enjoyed the sheer nihilism of it.