Forgotten Movie Review: 'S.F.W' Deserves to Be Forgotten

S.F.W

Directed by Jefery Levy

Written by Danny Rubin, Jefery Levy

Starring Stephen Dorff, Reese Witherspoon, Jake Busey, Joey Lauren Adams

Release Date January 20th, 1995

Published January 24th, 1995

S.F.W stars Stephen Dorff as Cliff Spab, a 20 year old slacker who rises to fame after he and a friend are among a group held hostage inside of a convenience store. A terror group called S.P.L.I.T Image is behind the hostage situation and they document the whole thing with video cameras that they demand to be played on television or they will kill their hostages. The TV networks agree and Cliff’s sarcastic, slacker philosopher becomes the star of the show.

With his catchphrase “So F***ing What” doubling as a thesis statement on modern life, the film picks up Cliff’s story in the wake of the end of the hostage crisis, a bloody shootout that ended with the death of Cliff’s friend, Joe (Jack Noseworthy). Free from the terrorists, Cliff re-enter the world unaware of his newfound fame. Returning home, Cliff is met by a series of uncaring family members, shallow hangers-on, and con artists eager to cash in on Cliff’s fame.

And all Cliff can do is gaze upon all of this phoniness and say ‘So F***ing What.’ The film unfolds as a series of unfunny, meandering encounters in which Cliff searches for a meaning that doesn’t exist, has sex with different women, and pines for the girl he was held captive with, a virginal high school valedictorian, Wendy Prister, played by Reese Witherspoon. She’s from a rich family that wants nothing to do with a lowlife like Cliff.

And that’s the plot, such as it is, of S.F.W. Cliff wanders and does very little, is rewarded at every turn with admiration. sex, and anything else that he might want. And, he gets the girl, despite the film having done nothing to demonstrate the relationship between Cliff and Wendy. We are told, but never actually shown, that Cliff saved Wendy’s life, but the only glimpses of their time together in the hostage situation is them sarcastically playing house and awkwardly bantering for the camera.

S.F.W isn’t so much a movie as it is an attempt to market a movie to Generation X. The film was created with the specific intention of appealing to a generation that really hated it when people tried to co-opt their lives for the purpose of marketing and money. Gen-X was sarcastic, cynical, and deeply bored, and when S.F.W tried to hold up a mirror to it, Gen-X smirked, rolled our eyes, and went back to bed.

So, why am I writing about S.F.W if my overall reaction to S.F.W is to roll my eyes and mutter the film’s title in full? It’s because 30 years after its release, I was curious if I had dismissed S.F.W simply because I was a cynical, sarcastic, Gen-X’er who could smell the market-tested stink of S.F.W from a mile away. What if S.F.W was actually an underappreciated gem that was overlooked in its own time?

Well, it wasn’t. S.F.W was met with a vast apathy upon its January 1995 release and that apathy was absolutely the correct response. There is nothing memorable or redeemable about this empty, cynical attempt to market Gen-X attitude back to Gen-X. The character of Cliff Spab is no more of a Gen-X messiah than he is a desperately dated film character fated to obscurity by his sheer ineptitude and lack.

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