Okay, I’m just going to say something that I know a lot of people are going to take issue with, but it’s important for me to just acknowledge it: “Empire Records” is an objectively bad movie.
And that’s okay! Just because this movie blows cinematic chunks doesn’t mean it can’t also rightfully be a huge nostalgia point for elder millennials—provided that your parents allowed you to watch VH1 growing up. Otherwise, you’re just a thirty-nine-year-old man who’s retroactively trying to grind through the youth he missed out on.
To be clear, I have tried to watch “Empire Records” three different times in my adulthood and have failed to complete it every time. As someone who now runs his own very successful business, I can’t focus on the plot while I’m noticing tons of wasteful overhead costs that that staff of scrappy slackers is constantly accruing. In business that’s just wasteful and inefficient!
Also, I’m never gonna see that one guy as a father figure. He’s like four years younger than I am now—I so missed the boat on that one. Come to think of it, why was the manager of the record store a father figure to begin with?
As bad as this movie inarguably is, I’m still pretty bummed out that I don’t have the formative experience of believing that it isn’t. The only reason my parents wouldn’t let me watch VH1 in the first place is because, in their words, “That Madonna hussy might be on there again trying to operate a gas pump.”
And because of that, I’ll never understand why everyone in seventh grade thought it was so funny that our class clown introduced himself to the substitute teacher as “Warren Beatty.” Trust me, if I tried that bit with the guys in my racketball league they would neither get it nor give a shit.
So I guess this is just where I’m at in life, happily married with however many kids people are supposed to have and thriving in both my personal and professional lives, but unable to relate to a VH1 teen classic from three decades ago. HELP ME!!!