"Generation Um" Movie Review

     You know, it's movies like these that remind me why some people hate Keanu Reeves. I, for one, do not; on the contrary, I am usually the one defending him. I thought he was decent in The Matrix, Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure, and Speed, and now John Wick has appeared to be an attempt to revive his somewhat-laughable filmography. But this film, on the other hand….well, I don't even know if I can call it a film. 

    I will be honest that, much like Dream House, I did not finish watching this turd. The biggest problem it had was this: nothing happens. That is literally the jist of it. I am not saying this because I am trying to be overdramatic in how bad and boring this film is, I am saying it because nothing fucking happens. For an entire hour and a half. Honest to God, nothing. There is no story, there is no character development of any of the people on screen. I couldn't even determine what the main conflict was. The only exposition given at all was that Keanu Reeves drives these two girls home after spending a night drinking with them. They stumble into their apartment, while he goes into his. They crack half-assed jokes while hungover. He feeds his cat. They crack more jokes. He takes a nap, then he wakes up again. The girls drink more. Keanu eats a sandwich.
   Bored yet? Because this, ladies and gentlemen, is the first thirty minutes of the movie. Obviously, it fails to do what all movies must (within the first ten minutes, to be correct): deliver actual exposition, and determine a fucking story! Honestly, where was the story? I had to look it up on Wikipedia to even get a grip on where this film was going, and even the description just said something along the lines of, "a few individuals learn new things about themselves". Yeah, that really narrows it down, right? It's not like this sort of thing happens in every single movie ever made or anything. This blurb is really just a basic dictionary description for the word "story". The problem, however, is that the movie should not be a definition for the word "story", but be an actual goddamn story. Don't tell me what the word means: tell me what it actually is! And this movie does no such thing. It was so pretentious in its delivery that it's as if it was a crappy inside joke written by a sleep-deprived and underpaid intern who later committed suicide after finishing this potato of a screenplay. And by the way, what did the screenplay for this film even look like? I can only guess it was one hundred and twenty pages that were largely blank, save for descriptions of what an average New Yorker would be doing on any given morning. Nothing special or interesting about any of it. Honestly; is this a real movie, or did someone leave the camera on as the actors were taking a break from filming another movie? We aren't given the chance or the resources to care, and quite frankly, we don't want to. I forced myself through thirty minutes of this before turning it off and nowhere in those thirty minutes did I give one ounce of a shit. There is literally nothing about this film that is compelling or intellectually stimulatin,g and quite frankly I think I lost a few brain cells while watching it.
   I believe this review would've been more well-rounded if the film actually possessed a story I could pick apart and analyze appropriately, but it just isn't there. I'm tired of these types of movies where nothing happens. I'm tired of watching a bunch of morose characters that mope around and do jack shit for two hours just to have the director pass it off as "art" simply because it's "edgy" in that they aren't emotionally developed. And for God's sake, I can't believe I sat through a full ten minutes of Keanu Reeves doing nothing except eating a fucking cupcake.
   There is a way to make this "type" of emotionally-repressed art, but other individuals have done it way, way better. Honestly, this movie would have worked if it was marketed as a mockumentary-style presentation of the "Sad Keanu" meme. If you want to waste brain cells more efficiently, please do me a favor and bash your head into the nearest wall several hundred times while listening to Nicki Minaj. Don't waste your time: skip this mess.

   Overall rating: 2.5/10