Review – Bright Lights, Big City

This should be Big 80s. It has the cast; Michael J. Fox alone should have been enough to assure it a spot on the decade’s Q-list. Add a lot of drinking and cocaine, and you should be getting a good picture of upper-middle-class white America thought about itself at the time. Trouble is, it’s so damn boring that it’s hard to stick with it long enough to draw much of a cultural look-and-feel from the experience. The plot is pure soap: Fox plays an under-employed yuppie trying to party away his dissatisfaction with life. His wife leaves him for a more glamorous life as a fashion model. His boss is a jerk. His best friend is a jerk. He’s still trying to come to grips with the death of his mother. And half of New York (with the audience along for the ride) has to play therapist as he shares his life story with anyone who will at least pretend to listen. I’m genuinely astonished to find myself typing this, but Less Than Zero was actually a better movie. See if desperate