Swingers

Year: 1996 - Miramax Films  Director: Doug Liman  Screenplay: Jon Favreau  Cinematography: Doug Liman  Starring: Jon Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Ron Livingston,  Alex Desert, Patrick Van Horn, Heather Graham

This movie is so cool, it's so hip, it's so.....money baby! Swingers is just the type of movie to watch on Monday night after spending a long weekend alone, still thinking about the person you used to spend weekends with, but who is now gone. Written by and starring Jon Favreau, this film's characters and their dialogue ring true. There are lots of funny moments and big laughs throughout this movie.

Jon Favreau plays Mike, a struggling comic who has come to Los Angeles from New York to make it big. After six months he has had little success in his career and worse, he is still obsessing about the old girlfriend he left behind, Michelle, who he broke up with after a six year relationship. Mike's friends, struggling actors in their own right, try their best to get Mike our of his funk. Mike is tired of the party-going, club-hopping scene. He refers to the women he meets as skanks and at the end of the night he usually ends up missing his old girlfriend even more. Mike's friend, Trent (Vince Vaughn) , has a solution - Vegas. Trent and Mike drive to Vegas in their best suits, trying to pass themselves off as big-time gamblers. The key to attracting the beautiful babes, according to Trent, is to look like "money". Mike and Trent fool no one with their high roller act. They do, however, attract a couple of women much to Mike's amazement, seeing how he views Trent's behavior toward the women as rather boorish. Trent thinks he and his buddy have it made when they end up in the trailer of a cocktail waitress and her friend. True to form, Mike ruins their chances by talking about his old girlfriend, Michelle.

The rest of the movie deals with Mike's struggle to deal with his breakup and getting back out there. Some of the more notably funny scenes are; Trent and Sue (Patrick Van Horn) playing video hockey; Sue's confrontation with "The House of Pain" wanna-bes; Charles' (Alex Desert) summation of every over-crowded party and club they go to ("This place is dead anyway!"); and Mike's pathetically capsulized relationship with a women crammed into five minutes on her answering machine.

One thing Mike and his friends all have in common is a great love for movies. They want to be in the movies, not to get rich, but to live the fantasy of the characters in those movies. Swingers pays homage to its characters favorite films in a couple of great parody sequences.  Going to a party, Mike and his friends all drive in separate cars in a convoy. The whole sequence is shot in the style of Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Then there is the steady-cam restaurant sequence from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. In the Swingers version, Trent leads Mike and Charles into the Derby via the back entrance with Trent saying hello to every hispanic dishwasher and busboy they pass as if he was a Mafioso big shot.

A great thing about this movie is that it shows the lifestyle of these characters without showing any of the business side of things. You see no agents, casting directors, or producers in this film. Hollywood usually loves showing off the business side of making movies. This film is more reminiscent of films of the Thirties like Stage Door in this regard.  And like the great musicals of the Thirties, Mike and a woman he meets, Lorraine (Heather Graham), ignite a romance by dancing together to the beat of swing music. The other thing about this film is its honest portrayal of how guys view the ritual of picking up women. All of the posturing and lying by guys is here. All of the superficiality of some women's judgment of men is also here. Trent's approaches the pick-up as a sport. Mike is in it for the long haul.

Swingers is a great comedy about friendship and moving on. I've watched this film four times and still find it a complete joy. I hope Jon Favreau continues to write screenplays.