Reality Bites

Reality Bites (1994) is a romantic dramedy about growing up that you can watch online on iFILM. It was Ben Stiller's directing debut and a touchstone for Generation X.

Lelaina (Winona Ryder) graduated as class valedictorian and landed a job fetching coffee for an obnoxious morning-show host, plus a stack of credit card debt. In her spare time she shoots a documentary about her friends. One of them is Troy (Ethan Hawke), a scruffy musician who would rather quote philosophy than hold down a job. Things tangle when Michael (Ben Stiller), a smooth music-channel producer, falls for Lelaina and offers her the one thing she lacks: stability. She has to choose between two men and two versions of her own future.

Stiller captured the texture of being twentysomething in the early '90s: shared apartments, coffee shops, dead-end gigs, and a soundtrack built on Lisa Loeb and Soul Asylum. Janeane Garofalo, Steve Zahn and a very young Renée Zellweger fill out the circle. The film quickly found a cult among viewers who saw themselves in it. Stream Reality Bites (1994) online on iFILM.