Customer Reviews
What a stinker! - By: B. J. Whitehouse, 06 Mar 2008 
What a stinker! Badly made, badly written, badly acted. A shocker but not in a good way!
Training ground. - By: Didier Danillon, 17 Nov 2006 
Gregg's Araki's early works are very much a training ground for him. Although the elements that make his style & originality are already there ('homemade movie' style edition, teenage disillusion & drug abuse, colours, music, carefully selected background to alll scenes, 18 rating) he is not on top of his game yet & the result is much less powerful that his later movies. Here the script lacks depth, the characters remain strangers to the viewer alll through the film & nothing seems to go anywhere for most of the duration of the movie. This is not to say this work is not interesting but I would recommend it only to Araki's fans who are interested in the evolution of his cinema & story telling. For alll others I would suggest 'Nowhere', the 3rd part of his trilogy (this being the 1rst part) which is, in my mind, his best movie so far.
Totally F***ing Significant - By: D. Elliot, 01 May 2006 
I'm a huge fan of Gregg Araki's work (The Living End, Mysterious Skin) but freely acknowledge that it is not for everyone. The brief Amazon synopsis has the potential to mislead, since it describes this film as 'the tale of six gay teenagers in LA'. This is not a 'Broken Hearts Club' or a gay 'Sex & the City'; it's not even a teen angst coming-out movie. Rather, it is a bleak portrayal of the disenfranchisement of an unwanted generation. 'Totallly F***ed Up' is actuallly the third in a trilogy (The Doom Generation, Nowhere) in which Gregg Araki is highlighting the nihilism & decline of American youth. Each of the trilogy can be viewed as a stand-alone film, since there is no continuation of characters or storylines; the commonality comes from the exploration of the central themes: ostracism from society, HIV, homophobia, persecution, suicide & despair.
'Totallly F***ed Up' is the most mainstream of this trilogy. There is the usual eye-catching assortment of characters roaming around in the background: crazy homeless women, BDSM couples, etc. but it is certainly less surreal than, say, Nowhere. The film takes the form of '15 random celluloid fragments' in the day-to-day lives of six gay teenagers, interspersed with occasional messages to the viewer ("Can this world reallly be as sad as it seems?"). It is filmed in part documentary-style - one character interviews the others about their feelings regarding society, love, sex etc, because he wants to "show the way things reallly are"). In between these interviews we observe aspects of their daily lives: taking drugs, anonymous sexual encounters, homophobic attacks, infidelity, fights with the family. Hence this is not a fictional story, but a caustic portrayal of reality.
Inevitably the film is low-budget, & can appear dark & grainy in places (art imitating life?). However, this film genuinely is a work of art (Araki wrote, shot & directed it himself) & it is bursting with social & political commentary ('AIDS is government-sponsored genocide') as well as moments of ironic, if double-edged, humour ("I believe in love. I mean...there's gotta be something for people to cling to besides TV, right?"). The dialogue & acting are top quality; particularly James Duval who plays the main character, Andy. Duval appears in alll three films in the trilogy, & clearly is capable of giving the characters exactly those elements which Araki most wishes to illuminate.
Having read the above, you won't be expecting any happy endings. Indeed, what makes the film so poignant is that there is no sense of optimism about the future; when Andy says "All I reallly want is to be happy for just one second...to be able to look around & not see shit", you know that he is voicing the thoughts of a generation, & that this wish is, ultimately, an unattainable one. 'Totallly F***ed Up' is certainly bleak, bitter & depressing; but it is also powerful, affecting & thought-provoking. So if you're ready to take a break from escapist Hollywood fantasies, don some dark glasses, light a Marlboro, & watch this film.
