The low budget Class B movies are loved by some and are hated by others. Most of these movies died out on the earlier part of this decade because directors were less willing to commit to these low earning flicks. However some have made the sacrifice to create movies such as Clerks, Mallrats, Dazed and Confused and Suburbia. Another one of these films is Allen Moyle’s 1995 film Empire Records.
The Empire Records Store is a run by the store manager Joe (Anthony LaPaglia). Joe serves as a father figure for his diverse bunch of generation X employees. The crazy bunch of young adults that work in the store include, Corey (Liv Tyler), the Harvard bound straight A rich girl, AJ (Johnny Whitworth), the dedicated morning manger, Lucas (Rory Cochrane) the night manager who has a strange sense of logic, Mark (Ethan Randall), a goofy hard rock fan, Eddie (James Willis), Mark’s even stranger side kick, Berko (Coyote Shivers), the guitar playing, slacker boyfriend of Debra (Robin Tuney) who’s “screw you” attitude shows through out the movie, and Gina (Renee Zellwiger), the promiscuous one.
The movie opens with Lucas’s “life reaching it’s pinnacle,” Joe is letting him close the store by himself. While he is closing the store, Lucas discovers that the store’s owner Mitchell Beck (Ben Bode) is planning to turn it into a part of the Music Town franchise. Knowing what this change will do to Joe, himself and the rest of his co-workers, Lucas takes the $9,000 profits from the day, that he has just counted, twice, and heads for Atlantic City to win enough money to buy the store. When he reaches Atlantic City he of course loses all of the money.
The next day Lucas returns to the store after Joe discovers that the money is missing and he is expecting a very good explanation from his employee. When Lucas tells him that the money is re-circulating in Atlantic City, Joe is furious. Now he must decide if he should either call Mitchell and turn Lucas in, or should he just cover the $9,000 dollars out of his own pocket with the money he was going to use to become a partner with Mitchell with hopes of one day buying the store from him.
The situation is further complicated by several factors throughout the day. First off Debra shows up to work after a botched suicide attempt and she shaves her head in the employee restroom.
Her behavior and mood are depressed even more than usual and this makes her conflict with her co-workers Gina and Corey even more heated. A pesky juvenile going by the name “Warren” (Brendon Sexton) is responsible for a shoplifting incident, a hold up and manages to convince Joe to hire him. AJ is determined to proclaim his love for Corey, but Corey is in love with washed up has been singer Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield). Manning is making an appearance at the store that day, creating more confusion with his spoiled behavior and a line of crazed fans.
Halfway through the day Manning’s assistant Jane (Debi Mazar) quits, making even more stress for Joe. Lucas, who before this day already had a unique thought process, begins with this new Zen ideology. This new found insight keeps the audience laughing with lines such as “Who knows where thoughts come from, they just appear.” With all this happening, the crew still manages to have several nervous breakdowns, share their inhibitions with each other, have a mock funeral, throw a great party and still have fun around the store. In the end, the main goal of the staff is to pull together and give one last shot at trying to save the store and their jobs.
Empire Records is very representative of Class B movies from the 1980’s. One movie from that genre that is very comparable to Empire Records is John Hughes’ 1985 film, The Breakfast Club. The acting in both films was pretty mediocre, but considering the ages of the stars, it is to be expected. The stars of Hughes’ film (Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy) were a bit more known at the time the movie was released due to previous Class B movies, and they even managed to gain some popularity as members of the “Brat Pack” during the eighties.
However, they were still relatively young, and because all they had been in were these Class B movies, their acting had not had a chance to develop. In Moyle’s film, many of the actors and actresses in the movie are relatively new to the acting scene and have also not had the time to develop their acting skills. Empire Records and The Breakfast Club’s wide range of characters was similar too. Hughes film relatively small cast included a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal, while the cast of Moyle’s film was larger, the same broad spectrum of traits was covered. Both movies had lower budgets and the settings these movies took place in are very reflective of this.
The 1985 film took place in a high school and the 1995 film took place in a record store with only a few brief scenes taking place elsewhere. Style wise the two movies are similar too, the time span of both is one day, and both movies have very broad weak plots. In The Breakfast Club, they have to make it through a day of Saturday detention and in Empire Records, they all have to make it through the business day and try to save the store. The plots in both movies have major complications that clutter it, but in the end the plot makes a comeback often disguised by the products of the tangents created in the story line.
This is a great movie. It may not be worthy of awards for technical merit or acting talent and no deep though can usually be associated with the movie, but it is still very entertaining.
It tends to be especially entertaining to those of us who were children (ages 4-12) when movies such as Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, The Lost Boys and Heathers were released. Some of us enjoyed these movies very much and we will always have a special place for them and movies like them in our hearts. Critics, such as Roger Ebert, were very unnecessarily harsh with this movie. Yes, the acting may be questionable and yes maybe it did not live up to the John Hughes standards of Class B movies, but who can. Those movies are classics in their own right. They are only a model for modern day directors to base their movies from.
Critics set themselves up for disappointment when they attempt to compare this movie and others like it to movie with big budgets. No one ever said that this movie was a multi-million dollar production, it was never marketed that way. The movie’s marketing was so low, many people did not even know it was in theaters. Critics still compare it to movies that had unsightly budgets and big name stars. Of course it would look bad in comparison. Among these movies that it was compared to was the movie Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone. In this movie, the bad acting and cluttered weak plot are pretty much equal to those in Empire Records, but the budget was bigger and the movie was targeted for a mainstream audience.
Empire Records does not conform to the mainstream media projection of what a movie should be like. This is a projection created by pop culture in society today. This movie is like the alternative rock music that accompanies this movie in its soundtrack that gives the members of generation X an alternative (hence the name) from popular music. Empire Records gives us a movie that appeals to us that are tired of the mainstream movies and looking for change or variety. If you are looking for some thing that pulls away from the mainstream just a little, Empire Records is the movie for you.
