Quick recap: A group of friends from high school learn to navigate the trials and tribulations of their early 20s at-you guessed it- a diner.

Kevin Bacon is peak Kevin Bacon

Fun (?) fact: As I learned from this article, Judd Apatow was directly influenced by Diner. He said that every scene in his movies where people are sitting around talking about sex, come from the dialogue from this movie.

Hear me out- young Mickey Rourke reminds me of Bruce Willis, but with hair. They even sound alike.

My thoughts: I know it will come as a shock to many, but I was never actually a college age male in 1950s Baltimore. I’m really glad to get that out of the way. Despite this handicap, I still expected to enjoy Diner, even if I couldn’t personally relate to it. I mean, what else could you possibly need in your life besides a young Kevin Bacon?

Plenty more, apparently, because I just didn’t care for this movie all that much. It’s one thing to have a movie about ‘nothing’, but it’s another thing to have a whole bunch of ‘nothings’ make you think you are about to get ‘something’, when in fact everything will happen exactly like you predicted in the beginning: the wedding will go on, a young man with a gambling problem will not be taken out by the mob, and the young couple will fall back in love, exactly where they started.  ‘But!’, you say. ‘What about the journey? The self-actualization? The maturity?’. Yes, the friends grew up and learned to live in their situation but they never actually came to terms with anything, except the value of resignation. I imagine a sequel where everyone meets up in 10 years, probably in the same diner, and everyone sits around complaining about the same issues they’ve always had. I wasn’t expecting some twist or even closure, but don’t hand me a sappy ending when you know full well that when the camera stops, everything continues as it always has been.

Final review: 2/5. The point is for Kevin Bacon.

Up next: The Night of the Shooting Stars