User reviews

One of those uber nineties movies that critiqued the media and tried to be edgy. These movies look somewhat ridiculous today. (Though the Chase with Charlie Sheen at least managed to be funny). Part of the problem is that the underlying philosophy is a value free world weariness which when put on film comes across as spoiled, stupid, and self indulgent laziness. And since movies are essentially THEE dominant form of media, criticizing media's omnipresence or vanity comes across as blithely self deluded. That said the cast does the best with what they have.... which generally rounds out to putting as much emphasis on their turn to curse as possible. The plot..... if it can be called that makes very very little sense if you stop to think about for more than half a second. The central event of movie is never so much explained as much as it brought back in choppy flashbacks in order to remind the audience about why were following these characters. Better time could be spent watching a smarter film on the topic. I suggest Network.

All that being said, I can't completely hate a movie with this great of a soundtrack. The fact that almost a minute of screen time is given over to the band Gwar makes it at least retain some value. I've also noticed that music from the 50's - 70's is thrown into movies at all different times. But the only time you hear 90s music is in 90's era movies. It's almost as though Gen X in their nihilism forgot to leave any lasting mark on culture.

S.F.W.

Aspect ratio: 1.85:1

Sound format: Dolby Stereo

A feckless young man (Stephen Dorff) becomes an unlikely celebrity after surviving a televised hostage ordeal in his local convenience store, but he's unable to reconcile the tragedy of the siege - in which his best friend (Jack Noseworthy) was killed - with the exaggerated version of events peddled by a ratings-hungry media.

Jefery Levy's cult-movie wannabe pairs Dorff alongside relative newcomer Reese Witherspoon in a vicious assault on the contemporary media, depicted here as a soulless entity concerned solely with ratings and money (yeah, so what else is new?). The message is obvious, but Levy and co-scriptwriter Danny Rubin (GROUNDHOG DAY) revel in their own daring: Dorff and Witherspoon play ordinary characters who emerge from an extraordinary situation and are forced to confront their unexpected (and unwanted) fame. However, Levy's unflattering view of modern journalism (symbolized by John Roarke as a variety of thinly-disguised real-life TV celebrities who feed off other people's misery, and Gary Coleman in a fleeting, self-deprecating cameo) seems a little distorted and misleading, though clearly filtered through the lead character's personal viewpoint. Dorff himself is terrific, as always, playing a charismatic and foul-mouthed Everyman, scornful of the manner in which his personal misfortune has been manipulated to feed the expectations of a mindless, sensation-hungry audience. But there are moments when the screeching soundtrack fades abruptly to silence and Levy concentrates on Dorff's haunted face as he recalls key events - good and bad - from the siege, and the friendships that were forged and destroyed under extreme duress. The movie doesn't say anything new, but the execution is invigorating.

Look out for an early appearance by Tobey Maguire as a young stoner who thinks he's died and gone to heaven when he and his buddy (Dana Allan Young) encounter their idol Dorff on an empty street (a truly hilarious sequence). Steve Antin cameos as a news reporter named after his character in the equally odd INSIDE MONKEY ZETTERLAND, helmed by Levy in 1992.

I just watched S.F.W. and was amazed at how, at least five years before the major trend of 'reality TV' became the in-thing, this movie satirized it, and showed it for how wrong and un-real it is. This movie scathingly commentates on the media's ability to warp and distort truth, and to give the mundane deep meaning. Cliff Spab is a meaningless person trapped in a meaningless society that does not appreciate the horror of his ordeal and ruthlessly tries to cash in on his pain. This film is chock-full of meaning and irony, and it is simply brilliant.

If not its certainly a contender. If anything you could look at the rest of his career and consider he has been searching for ways to recreate this character ever since.

Its a pretty cool movie that along with Natural Born Killers was a high profile examination of, at the time, media practices (NBK in a much more extreme way) and the creation of celebrity (regardless of talent or in spite of it).

Its sassy, funny and for sure entertaining :)

It is one thing for a film to merely be bad, it is quite another for it to insult your intelligence. The latter happened to me in this non-attempt at filmmaking. How the likes of Stephen Dorff and Reese Witherspoon (one of my all time favorite actresses) got messed up in this I'll never know, but I hope they fired their managers afterward. This is, quite possibly, the single worst movie I have ever seen (Roger Ebert agrees!). Every character seems to be a ripoff of some celebrity who probably had the common sense to steer clear of this movie. Every situation seems entirely implausible. What's more, the writer seems to have a vocabulary that extends to only the three words in the title (you figure it out). This was a painful movie to watch, not because of it's depth, but because it is so inexcusably horrible. It may be the first time in my life that I actually felt sorry for the actors, who really were at the mercy of this doomed screenplay. I so not buy for one minute the notion that this movie may simply have been "too deep" to appreciate. Please, I do not need to be insulted again. Reese, I still think you are on top of your game, and this was ten years ago during your indie phase, so I don't hold you accountable, just please don't let it happen again.

It's another movie about an Everyman who is thrust into the eye of instant pop fame by being a hostage in a nationally televised incident. First he enjoys the superficiality of the fame, then.....

In other words, it's mostly like a dozen other films that address this theme, just a little differently. This one's a little more deft at dishing out the satire and irony, despite rocking hard those product placements that films relied on in the 90s, in this case, heineken, which we see too many times to count. Since it was an new emerging director at the time, there's a lot of emphasis on attempts to produce fresh, thoughtful imagery. It's a commentary on the meaninglessness of popular reality tv, which was new then, albeit in the mid-1990s. It's hard to remember in 2021 how new we were to instant-reality-tv fame, and when, despite our addiction to it, we also still seemed to know how tasteless it was, before it became part of our ever-present background via social media. A little of EdTV meets Natural Born Killers, with a pretty and then-promising young Stephen Dorff, and a pretty and cute-as-a-button young Reese Witherspoon.

Kudos for not being afraid to show lower middle-class white Southern California the way it really was and is, without all the California/Los Angeles/Beach cliches that audiences lazily expect. Also kudos for showing the character of Spab as a real life character that he probably should be -- aimless, ambitionless, talentless, but redeemed by innate charisma, gift for gab, and good looks.

This is one of Dorff's better dramatic roles. Witherspoon, on the other hand, was not given much to work with, beyond being the "co-star." Busey, as usual for both he and his father, stole every scene he was in, which wasn't many.

I saw this movie on TV without much expectations, but it turned out to be worst than I could have imagined. In fact, S.F.W. is possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. Both the plot and the characters are completely cliched to the point where it's almost painful to watch. It seems like this movie was made just for Stephen Dorff to act self-important in and appeal to the not-so-bright kids of the grunge generation.

I'm not trying to say that this movie is the greatest movie ever made, but I feel that it is too bad that more people do not know about S.F.W. It's a bit hard to believe the plot, but since when have movie plots played within the guidelines of normal society. Stephen Dorff gives an amazing performance as Cliff Spab. This was the first movie I ever saw him in, and seeing S.F.W. really made me think he is destined for big things. I liked how the story shifted from past to present constantly. This way, you had to wait until the end of the movie to find out what happened at the beginning. Makes it all the more intriguing. I love this movie, and most people would too if they gave it half a chance.

S.F.W. is not a great movie. It's not a bad movie. It's the sort of movie which should make up the mainstream. The bland ineffectualities of the average movie are grinding away at our expectations and it may well be helpful to have movies such as this or the Matrix. They're entertaining with a slight side order of thought-provoking.

Like the Matrix, it doesn't ask too much of you, but lets you extend the ideas in your mind with a few pointers. The issue raised in this movie (the disintegration of reality in the media saturated post-modern world) should certainly be covered more in this medium. Though it doesn't use the trick of implication of the viewer (Natural Born Killers, Funny Games), there is a certain guilt created by its admittedly slightly heavy handed media satire.

Stephen Dorff and Reese Witherspoon generally choose their films well (with the notable exception of Space Truckers) and serve them well. This movie will look great on their C.V. though will taint Dorff particularly with the Gen-X tag. The self-destructive lifestyle of Dorff's character grates a little, as he is always groomed with the finest Sub Pop Grunge Brush. Look to films like Gummo for the reality of these grimy lifestyles.

The film is edited so as to lack any real time-scale and is conceptual in nature, with only character sketches and brief insight into the people involved. Hence, there is little empathy with the story from any angle but your own personal emotions on the subject it covers. More films in this genre should be this thoughtful.

I truly feel sorry for the people who paid money to see this film, and I use that term loosely. With only $64,000 in ticket sales at least only a couple thousand were subjected to the seemingly unending nothingness of this movie. The writing is so patently obvious and juvenile, a five year old could have thought of better lines sitting on the toilet. I don't completely blame the actors for their terrible performances since they had very little to work with from the writing. What I can't believe are the reviewers who rave about this movie. Were we watching the same thing? Were you high? Oh right, given the content, you probably were. Please don't ever waste your time watching this, unless you are contemplating suicide.

I watched this film not knowing what to expect; what I got was one of the coolest, most original films I've seen. It is ostensibly a hostage-drama set in a Fun-Stop convenience store, but rapidly reveals itself as more; a biting attack on the media circus and the hype machine, a revealing portrayal of suburban life in America, and a comment on the nature of heroes. The leads are played effortlessly by Stephen Dorff (who seems to not be acting at all)and Reece Witherspoon, with excellent support from B-movie stalwarts Joey Lauren Adams and Jack Noseworthy. All the characters are unlike those you see in most films... they are the sort of people you've met, but never expected to see on screen. Characters the hero Spab (Dorff) meets along the way are delightfully unattractive and random, from the hippie Earl and his militant partner to the receptionist in a neck brace at a posh hotel. Richard Portnow's FBI agent has some wonderfully quotable lines, and Mr and Mrs Spab soon reveal themselves to be far from the perfect parents. The arrangement of the story (flashbacks are employed heavily) lets you build up a rounded picture of the events that made Spab a hero, not revealing the true account of what happened in the store until near the end. Up to this point the events are clouded by the media and gossip surrounding the "Fun-Stop Hostage Crisis" and although we are led to believe Spab did something spectacular, the later flashbacks reveal why he is unwilling to assume the mantle of hero and why he seems to be in a bad mood most of the time!. A great film that depicts a classic anti-hero with more than adequate back-up from the script and cast. Watch it soon!.

This film, while not the greatest story about media ever told, must be seen... If only for the quality of the acting. The plot veers from left, right and center too fast and the characters seem disjointed as if they all had multiple personalities disorder. The premise on the other hand is fantastic. A couple of 20 year-olds are considered true heroes because they survived an hostage situation everyone got to watch on TV. It tries to say something about the media and the youth culture but it loses momentum very fast. All in all, a missed opportunity.

S.F.W. the concept was interesting the plot once watched was lame and boring a true waste of a casts time and a industry's money.

Once you see it you will soon forget it!!

Stephen Dorff & Reese Witherspoon just waste there time & talents in a really wasted script. With a better more talented screenwriter and a more talent director the movie could have been so much more mabey even some underground cult film. But what happens to a story about 5 people that are being held hostage in a convenience store for 36 days, & one of them demands from the hostage takers that all TV-stations should broadcast the entire situation live, turns into a boring little movie with nothing more than a loud soundtrack and really bad over the top acting in a really bad made for Tv movie of the week for the big screen.

Whats funny is that Reese Witherspoon is billed as a main character, she is on the cover of the DVD box but she is hardly in the movie, and when she is on screen she shows what talent she does have, but how much of it is wasted.

Stephen Dorff is a great actor, another of the under-rated talents in Hollywood today who seems to find really bad scripts that just really under-rate his talent and "S.F.W." is just another film that is a big mistake on his acting resume.

Rounding out the rest of cast that sseem to waste there talents is both Jake Busey and the very laughable not so talented Natasha Gregson Wagner.

One film I'm adding to my "Worst Films of 1994" list!!!

See it once, if you don't fall asleep, and once the credits roll you will soon forget it.

Way, way ahead of it's time (similarly themed films made years after were Natural Born Killers, Mad City, Truman Show), this is, quite simply, a life-altering, mind-altering film which zeroes in on and then embodies the zeitgeist of the nineties. See this film, take a look at the world surround you (especially western popular culture), and think about it. It's also pretty f***in' funny.

I saw this movie on release ages ago and it's not hard to fall in love with it at first.

Stephen Dorff's performance is really amazing. You never think for a moment he isn't Cliff Spab, with all the pent-up rage, pain, hostility and hilarity that it entails.

For the first half of the movie, it's really "the Cliff Spab/Stephen Dorff Show." He goes on a sort of Jack Kerouac road trip, bumping heads and rubbing noses with a variety of characters (and some wonderful actors who play them): Jake Busey (a good movie for once), Joey Lauren Adams (always terrific and smokin' hot here), and Pamela Gidley (quite a complex little cameo).

But after his odyssey ends, there doesn't seem to be much of a place to go...the film just stalls. I think the intent was for it to be completely character driven, so I wasn't expecting, well, a story-line or anything, but still.... I was hoping for more of a connection between the final scene, Spab's revelations, and the rest of the movie leading up to that point, but it didn't happen.

Never read the book, but it sounds like that ending would have made more sense. A movie this dark doesn't deserve a happy ending....a little too tidy, in my opinion. But SFW?

Cliff Spab (Stephen Dorff) and his next door neighbor best friend since childhood Joe Dice are slacker fast food workers. The two of them get taken hostage at the local convenient store along with Wendy Pfister (Reese Witherspoon) and others. The terrorists call themselves SPLIT Image and demand to have their hostage video broadcast on live TV. After killing hostages, the authorities relent and the three remaining hostages become worldwide reality stars during their 36 days imprisonment. Cliff would often say S.F.W. in the face of the constant threats. Joe starts a shootout where he's killed. Cliff and Wendy are the two survivors and become separate media stars.

Cliff is a slacker without a cause. It doesn't make him an appealing lead. His story is meandering and his character is aimless. It would have been great to have Cliff and Wendy together but it takes a long time for the characters to reunite. This movie tries to be a satire on the modern media but it's broad without anything funny. It's mimicry rather than insightful. This could have been interesting with more Witherspoon but it eventually wears out its welcome.

Neat premise, some nifty acting by Dorff and especially Reece Whitherspoon, but unfortunately, this film takes itself WAY too seriously to be taken seriously. This would have made an excellent comedy, and the talent was there in the two leads. Instead, it takes an interesting, original premise and turns it into a preachy borefest. With a lead character like Dorff's, one would assume there would be a little old fashioned, punk rock humor to the proceedings. If I wanted to hear a sermon, I'd start going to church or reading Noam Chomsky (the obvious inspiration for some of this film) books again. Truly a pity, because this could have been a great film.

I saw this movie about 3 or 4 years ago, and fell in love with it. It was at a period in my life that I needed something to show me that I was still alive and things could always be worse, this movie was it. The characters, the plot, the cinematography, all of it. Every minute of this movie kept me wondering what would happen next, and a lot of had edge of my seat suspense. Stephan Dorff did such a great job of playing this character. Having to balance such an emotionally scarred but still nonchalant young man must have been difficult. I really believed that he had been put through these awful things though, because his performance was that good. Reese Witherspoon also gave a great performance. I believe her role in this movie was slightly under-rated, she played your typical romantic interest but she also was the reason that Dorff's character didn't lose his mind.

I often find that the cinematography is better in independant films, and I believe this was independant. It had some bad language in it, but that doesn't bother me. The symbolism that is throughout this movie amazed me, and I notice something new everytime I watch it. SFW is based on the book 'Madison Heights Syndrom', and even though I've never read the book, I'm sure they did a great job adapting it. There was not one thing about this movie I didn't like and would recommend it to everybody.

Stephen Dorff and Reese Witherspoon play Cliff Spab and Wendy Pfister, a couple of kids who were held hostage for 30 days in a convenience store and became unsuspecting media sensations when their ordeal, unbeknownst to them, was broadcast to the world. The film mainly takes place after that and follows them as they navigate the trauma of their experience and their newfound notoriety. Spab's F. U. too-cool-for-school Gen-X attitude becomes a media sensation and his catchphrase during the hostage crisis, "So f---ing what?", the height of Gen-X disaffection, becomes commercialized, along with himself and Wendy. There could have been a great movie here, but an uneven tone spoils that. Dorff and Witherspoon give such good performances, that the audience genuinely cares about what happens to them and feels bad how the media and the public pretend to care about them, but doesn't appreciate or want to understand what they went through. Their trauma is made palpable by their sincere performances, which feels incongruous with the rest of the film's broad comedic presentation of the media circus around them. For example, you have Gary Coleman playing Spab in a TV movie, and the filmmakers also have the same actor playing multiple TV hosts (impersonating Sam Donaldson, Phil Donohue, Ted Koppel, etc.), which only serves to take the audience out of the reality of the film. And the flashbacks to the hostage situation are truly chilling. That juxtaposed with Gary Coleman feels like two completely different movies. That may have been the point, but the comedy detracts and cheapens the rest of the film. The same point could have been made with a realistic presentation of the media circus. Dorff is wildly charismatic and he and Witherspoon have some of the best on-screen chemistry I've seen in a long time. They're pretty irresistible in the scenes they share together. It's no wonder Witherspoon became a huge star, but it makes me wonder why Dorff didn't. The flashback of them singing a duet of "As Long as We've Got Each Other" is such a sad and beautiful moment (to non-Gen-Xers that was the theme song to GROWING PAINS), but it really shows off both of their talent. Besides Reese and Dorff, the cast includes forgotten 90s stars Jake Busey (STARSHIP TROOPERS), Joel Lauren Adams (CHASING AMY), Pamela Gidley (CHERRY 2000), and Jack Noseworthy (BREAKDOWN). There's a great score by composer Graeme Revell and terrific photography by Peter Deming, who's shot everything from EVIL DEAD II (his first film) to David Lynch's MULHOLLAND DRIVE and more recently MCU movies. Overall, while S. F. W. Seeks to condemn the media, consumer culture, classism, and hypocrisy of American society in general, which is ironic given the '90s Gen-X ethos not giving a rip (it's also funny now that Gen-X is in their 40s and 50s and are the establishment), but weakens its message with out-of-place and unnecessary comedy. It's a flawed film for sure, but one I really like and plan to revisit.

It is one thing for a film to merely be bad, it is quite another for it to insult your intelligence. The latter happened to me in this non-attempt at filmmaking. How the likes of Stephen Dorff and Reese Witherspoon (one of my all time favorite actresses) got messed up in this I'll never know, but I hope they fired their managers afterward. This is, quite possibly, the single worst movie I have ever seen (Roger Ebert agrees!). Every character seems to be a ripoff of some celebrity who probably had the common sense to steer clear of this movie. Every situation seems entirely implausible. What's more, the writer seems to have a vocabulary that extends to only the three words in the title (you figure it out). This was a painful movie to watch, not because of it's depth, but because it is so inexcusably horrible. It may be the first time in my life that I actually felt sorry for the actors, who really were at the mercy of this doomed screenplay. I do not buy for one minute the notion that this movie may simply have been "too deep" to appreciate. Please, I do not need to be insulted again. Reese, I still think you are on top of your game, and this was ten years ago during your indie phase, so I don't hold you accountable, just please don't let it happen again.

I had high hopes for this movie but was totally disappointed upon seeing it. For how much I didn't like it, something about this movie stuck with me ten years later, looking back I've created a more interesting version of what this movie COULD have been in my head, It put me on the edge of wanting to believe that it was a poor man's Oliver Stone movie. The most intriguing thing about this movie is that watching it puts you in a specific time and place, a short lived style in the early to mid 90's that seems like a twilight zone dream. It captures something about that time that very few movies have done. Other than that quality, the plot, which starts off great slowly rolls down an incline and falls flat off a cliff. The characters almost have depth and catch your interest right from the start but end up over the top annoying, especially the main character Spab. By the end of the movie, he's lost any redeeming quality and Joey Lauren Adams character's continual whining becomes like nails on a chalk board. Having had no background knowledge of this movie upon seeing it, I really thought that Kevin Smith was somehow involved because it has the same feel of his early work and uses a few of the same actors. All in all, this could have been a memorable movie, far ahead of it's time with it's depiction of reality TV and media sensationalism but in reality, was really just a big waste of time.

A young man becomes famous due to a horrific situation. Now he has to live with the fame and the memories that it brings. There seem to be too many characters, that are developed only to be left with without discussion after their scene. Stephen Dorff does a great job, which is important, since the movie is mostly watching him walk around and deal with the stresses of his fame. The flashbacks seem to do a good job of show his traumatic stress disorder.

The sound track is great, with a special appearance by GWAR.

See it or not. As the main character says "So F**king What?"