LGM Film Club, Part 412: Empire Records
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I am not sure I ever saw Empire Records when it came out in 1995. It was famous for its cover of Liv Tyler in her too short sweater exposing her belly. It is a story about a struggling independent record store trying not to go corporate. It has a lot of quirky employees. It was also not highly received at the time. Now it is considered a cult classic by some. So I decided to watch it.
Empire Records is a bad movie, flat out. All the female characters are archetypes. Tyler is The Perfect Girl Who Actually Has Hidden Problems. Renee Zelleweger is The Slut. Robin Tunney is The Suicidal Goth Girl. The male characters are mostly various versions of dumbass. Anthony LaPaglia plays the manager. But the movie is just so, so dumb. It is just trying so hard, a Hollywood attempt to get at mid-90s culture through hot chicks and dudes who do dumb shit and a plot that is quarter-assed, mostly around an 80s star doing a record store singing. Plus a lot of gay jokes, which at least is the one thing about the music scene at that time it got right.
The value here, such as it is, is as a 90s nostalgia trip. But you can do better than this. I’d say this is a 4/10.