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Four Letter Words Movie Review

Four Letter Words is a 2000 independent comedy film directed by Sean Baker in his feature film debut. It’s his weakest film for sure.

The movie offers a study of the post-adolescent male psyche, through a raw and unadulterated look at the views, attitudes, and language of young men in Suburban America. After watching the last four films that Sean Baker has directed and after ranking each one of them with a stellar 4.5 rating, I finally decided to go and watch his previous features. This is his debut and it’s unfortunately his weakest film to date.

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I do not have any qualms with this movie and it shouldn’t be judged too harshly given that it was his first feature. The dialogue is undeniably grounded in reality. The acting performances are serviceable across the board, especially solid for these amateur performers. The characterization is slighter than expected for Baker and it really should have been better in a film that relies heavily on its crew of characters.

My main issue with Four Letter Words is its lack of authenticity or originality. Sean Baker still hadn’t adopted his signature style of grounded, character-driven filmmaking at this early point in his career. Instead, what we have here is somebody copying Richard Linklater, especially his 1996 effort ‘SubUrbia’. But the movie lacked the sophistication and professionalism of that and other Linklater features, which made it feel like a pale imitation.

Technically speaking, this was a mess of a film. The sound, cinematography and overall production was quite amateurish, resulting in a poor-looking and sounding film. Some solid editing was present here as Baker has always been an excellent editor of his own films, but otherwise this was quite a mediocre affair. But this was his first movie, so you should not be judging it too negatively. I just wished that the characters were more likable and their conversations more varied as it quickly grew tiresome listening to them talking about sex constantly.

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