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Diner Movie Review

Diner is a 1982 drama film directed by Barry Levinson and starring Steve Guttenberg and Daniel Stern among many others. It’s such an overrated, disappointing movie.

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“Do you ever get the feeling that there’s

something going on that we don’t know about?“

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Eddie invites his childhood friend Billy to serve as the best man at his upcoming wedding. Billy and Eddie meet their college friends at a local diner and recollect their past days. The premise of this film and its critical reception made me believe that I was in for a real treat in the vein of something like ‘My Dinner with Andre’. The two movies in reality could not be further apart from each other.

Unlike the aforementioned picture, this one had none of the insight or sophistication in its dialogue. Instead, what we have here is almost two hours of endless speeches about almost nothing of substance. We hear these friends talk about sex, girls, food, music and so on and so forth, but nothing meaningful ever comes out of it. There are a few deeper moments, but those are quite fleeting.

Diner was made to cash in on the nostalgia for the fifties that the director Barry Levinson clearly experienced himself. The result is one of his lesser efforts and one of the most dated films of this era. Yes, the minute details are incredible. The cars, the titular diner, the music and the clothes – all of those literally transport you to this time period effortlessly. But there is only so much that I could take of this atmosphere as after all plot should come first and vibes should come second in any film.

The movie features a cast of familiar names, none of whom ever achieved any real success in Hollywood, but they all did a very good job here admittedly. Kevin Bacon was over-the-top but solid, Mickey Rourke quite charming while Guttenberg and Stern were the most memorable of the bunch. But the women were sidelined and the film was a product of its time in its poor treatment of female characters. Even worse was the fact that none of these men were likable at all. In fact, I found all of them to be pretty insufferable. If you can’t connect or empathize with any single one of the film’s characters, then the movie simply does not work.

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