Swingers
Few films have explored the pain of being a 20-something single as hilariously as Doug Liman’s classic Swingers. If you’ve never seen this film, which packs a bevy of memorable scenes and spawned several catch phrases (“You’re so money!”), it’s high time you checked it out. If you're already familiar with Swingers’ razor-sharp dialogue, you know that's it a great excuse to assemble the crew, have a few drinks and enjoy some laughs.
Swingers follows the ups and downs (mostly downs) of Mike (Jon Favreau), a struggling actor who has recently moved to Los Angeles from New York. When he moved, he left behind a girlfriend of six years, and he hasn’t been able to get her off his mind, a problem that’s exasperated by his lack of success on the L.A. singles scene.
Fortunately for Mikey, he’s got some buddies who are bent on cheering him up, most notably the smooth-talking Trent (Vince Vaughn), who convinces Mike to make an impromptu trip to Vegas to wash away his problems with gambling, women and booze. It’s the first of many unsuccessful (and roaringly funny) forays into the singles scene for Mikey, who is alternately too nice, too nervous, and too neurotic to achieve any level of success with the ladies.
This sort of material has been mined with much less success by many movies, but Swingers has three noteworthy forces working for it: star Favreau’s superb script, a great cast and Liman’s top-notch direction.
The witty screenplay delivers enough laughs and memorable lines to reward repeat viewings, from Trent’s boast that he’s going to “Find me two cocktail waitresses and pull me a Fredo” to a hilarious conversation between Mike, Trent and the rest of the crew about how long you should wait before calling a girl whose "digits" you got.
Liman, who also directed the excellent Go, throws in a a number of deft touches that add to the script. Check out the slo-mo walking scene that’s an amusing homage to Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Or the unusual imagery complete with Jaws music to illustrate Trent’s growing discomfort with a girl he just met. Bonus points also go to the crew member who outfitted Mikey with his hilariously short tie for a great scene where Mike and Trent wind up in the trailer home of two Vegas cocktail waitresses.
The ensemble cast is terrific, with special kudos to the two leads, Favreau and Vaughn. Favreau is outstanding as the lovable nice-guy loser Mike, giving a deeply funny and even touching performance. Case in point: Mike’s ill-advised attempt to leave a message on the answering machine of a hottie he met just a few hours before. As the womanizing Trent, Vaughn exudes star charisma, delivering his lines with flair without falling into cartoonish excess.
Despite its low budget and unknown (at the time) director and cast, Swingers became a modest indie hit. Now, more than five years after its release, great word-of-mouth buzz has transformed it into a film deserving of college classic status.
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"I'll have a scotch on the rocks, any scotch will do, as long as it's not a blend of course. A single malt: Glenlivet, Glenfiddich, Glengary, any Glen..."
As Trent so eloquently assures Mikey, “Baby, we’re gonna get laid.”
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