Kitchen Party (1997)

Kitchen Party takes a smart, honest look at teenagers and a stupid, contrived look at adults and never manages to knit the two together. The result is a film that's sporadically amusing and endearingly awkward, yet persistently stumbles.Scott (Scott Speedman) is a teenage dickhead who dresses like he's a big fan of the movie Swingers. His impossible parents are going out for the evening, leaving Scott at home with his basement-dwelling brother Steve (Jason Wiles). Scott decides to invite some other kids over for a party, but one that has to be confined to the kitchen because his parents will freak out if even one carpet fiber is disturbed in the living room. The party fills up with a collection of teen archetypes. There's Tim (A.J. Bond) the good kid and Wayne (Tygh Runyan) the tagalong and Cal (James McBurney) the nerd and Lester Dave (Dave Cox) the misfit. There's also a gaggle of girls including Marie (Joelle Thomas) the nerd bait and Crystal (Michelle Skalnik) the needy and Cynthia (Sarah Strange), who's both Wayne's girlfriend and den mother to this little clique. Tammy is the new girl to the group and is Scott's sort of/almost/but not quite girlfriend.While the teens mill around fretting over beer, weed, Scott's mysterious brother and a handgun, Scott's parents (Kevin McNulty and Gillian Barber) get together with two other couples for a little pre-party dinner where they act like enormous jerks. Eventually, Tammy runs off with Scott's brother, Lester goes mental and it all climaxes in one of those neighborhood scandals where the cops get called but no one gets hurt.Kitchen Party is one of those slice-of-life stories that prides itself on its lack of narrative. There are things that happen, but they are merely platforms upon which the characters can recline and radiate angst of both the teenaged and middle aged varieties. That sort of thing tends to leave me cold. In this case, however, I kind of liked it. The film generates a pretty realistic atmosphere of what it's like to be young and unable to see beyond yourself and your immediate environment. These young people are a stew of the obliviousness and self-doubt that simultaneously defines so many of us at that age.Unfortunately, that easy naturalism does not extend to the portrayal of the adults in Kitchen Party. Except for a drug dealing neighbor (John Payne) who is actually the most responsible person in the whole story, the parents are nothing more than the dysfunctional source of their kids' dysfunctions. You're never supposed to look at them and think anything more than "Oh, that's why Scott is the way he is" or "Oh, that's why Lester is the way he is".And while the individual teenage characters are well drawn and well acted, they don't make any sense as a group. They're clearly meant to be a circle of friends but they interact as though they barely know each other. There's no flow or logic to the group dynamic. There's no explanation for why these kids would ever be hanging out together.That lack of logic is even worse when it comes to the parents. For example, one of the big issues in the film is that if Scott makes even the slightest screw up, his dad will prevent him going away to school and force him to stay at home and attend a local college. Yet, Scott's dad demonstrates such contempt for and lack of connection to his son, it is irrational for him to want to keep Scott around. He might not pay for him to go to college, but everything about his behavior says Scott's dad should be desperate to get both his kids out of the house. This glaring contradiction is never acknowledged or explained.I enjoyed Kitchen Party for its affecting recreation of the ungraceful, yearning idiocy of teenhood. That nostalgic sensation is all it has to offer, though, so don't expect anything more if you watch this film.

This film about a group of teenager doing a little forbidden party. Mainly the movie is very interresting for it's way of it makes his character talk. We can easily find the major themes in the movies : generation problem, drugs and gun and perhaps family. The uncool kid is the very first character of his kind (never seen that way of thinking in any other film). He is like the teller of the story, doesn t do much, doesn t miss much neither. He is the morality of the film basically. If you like to see how it is like to be a teenager in our days I really recommand you this movie. Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did for it's truth that he is saying.

Speaking as a 33 year old, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie about a group of highschool students having a party. This setting of a group of teens having a party at friend's house took me back to my highschool days. It was so incredibly real that it could have been any one of the parties I attended in my school days.I also got a lot of laughs and thought the script was wonderfully interesting. Two thumbs up for a project well done! Anyone who has ever partied in their lives, should definitely see this one. And Scott Speedman! What a doll, if only I were 10 years younger!

Intercuts between high school kids at one home, and typical wasp parents drinking at dinner party, which leads to a crisis for all concerned. The satire of white middle class life is old hat, and the teen life presented was done much better by same director in previous, debut effort - The Suburbanators. Skip this, and catch that one instead.