Back in the Day
Back in the Day
R | 07 January 2014 (USA)
Back in the Day Trailers

Sometimes in order to move forward, you have to go back. And in this raunchy comedy, Jim Owens does just that when he heads home for his high school reunion. In an attempt to relive the glory days with his boys and explore an old romance, he nearly destroys his hometown and friendships.

Reviews
Diagonaldi Very well executed
Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever
Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Cody One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
vchimpanzee The movie begins with Jim's commercial for All City Insurance.In Los Angeles, Jim is not a successful insurance executive, or even a successful actor. He is known for those commercials, and people sometimes sit on his face because insurance ads are used on benches. When he returns home after a difficult commute on The 405, during which we are subjected for what passes for music in today's world, he checks his telephone messages. One is from his agent, who has more bad news for him. Another is an invitation to come back to Newberg for the Castle High School Class of 1994 reunion. He also got an invitation in the mail. The state where Newberg is located is not mentioned as far as I know, but the local mall has "Washington" in its name. It's not in California because it is mentioned that Jim left the state. Jim has not returned home in years because he feels like a failure. In a flashback, with actual music by Air Supply, Jim is having a good time with his friends and someone is naked.Jim has to fly to Newberg, and when he arrives, his loser friends are there to meet him. Actually, Len and T seem mature, but Skunk and Freeman might as well still be in high school. The guys go to a bar called The Knob, where they meet Angie, who slept with everyone and is pregnant for either the third or fourth time (I forget), yet she smokes, drinks, and wears extremely short skirts and hates her kids. Then Laurie walks in. She dated Jim in high school but they lost touch. Now she's marrying Mark, and seeing Mark reminds Jim or a highlight of his high school football career.The group gets together for a barbecue and the guys play some bizarre ball game. Skunk, who was drunk earlier, shows up having been the victim of a prank, which ended with him naked in a neighbor's pickup truck. Jim and Laurie have a good time together but they are just friends. Nothing more. It's not like Jim wants Laurie to stop the wedding.At last it is time for the reunion, but Mark has his bachelor party. Jim picks up Laurie in his red 1969 Mustang, which actually belongs to Len. Skunk shows up with his wife Carol, who doesn't like her husband to be called that, and the guys have trouble remembering that his real name is Stuart. Principal Teagley is positively evil. I don't mean the character you love to hate, like Lex Luthor. I mean he is evil. He makes a threat that cannot be said on broadcast TV, but even these guys are shocked by it. Jim and his friends are and always have been losers, and that's the way Teagley continues to treat them. The guys play a great prank on him later. Jim and Laurie have a good time once again, and one gets the impression they might end up together. Mark has problems at his bachelor party, and there is reason for hope. After the reunion comes one of the movies funniest scenes, which involves vomiting. No, it's not the vomiting that's so funny, but just the outrageous situations.Both Skunk and Freeman show they are more than just losers.So will Jim and Laurie get together again? I can say this much: as in most movies where the guy is marrying the wrong girl or the girl is marrying the wrong guy, there is one of those exciting and bizarre scenes. Morena Baccarin shows the talent that later got her a role in the respected TV series "Gotham". her character is really likable, and she's one of the few intelligent people in the movie.Michael Rosenbaum actually wrote and directed this, in addition to starring. My expectations of him may be a little high because of his outstanding role in "Smallville", but he does a good job here. If you're expecting an ordinary but overly silly romantic comedy, and not a masterpiece, this is pretty good.Is this fun for the whole family? Not even when cleaned up for broadcast. I hope I've provided enough hints. If not, let me say that at times every other sentence has a character's mouth blurred briefly with no sound. Skunk and his wife like S & M. One of the characters does Sharon Stone's move from "Basic Instinct". I've mentioned several scenes with nudity because of pranks or whatever. Still, if you can handle Seth McFarlane's Fox sitcoms, you might be able to enjoy this.Be sure and stay around for the outtakes with the closing credits!
holistic-5 I couldn't make it through this film, turned it off after 30 painful minutes. Stereotypes run rampant through the film. The "average" guys are hardly average, they are glorified in all their mediocrity. Nobody in this film seems real. Even the film score is painful, hardly representing music from the early 90s. The humor in this film is dull, really it is more for "successful" folks to laugh at the losers they knew in high school. Basically it is the writers' wet dream of going to their high school reunion to laugh at all those poor sobs who didn't have the opportunity to make it to the middle class. Shame on you.The acting is woeful, the leads are basically movie stars trying to pretend to be normal Americans. What a joke.None of the main characters are likable, unless you can really relate with them, in which case, I just feel sorry for you. Don't waste your time with this one.
Esken Beautiful actress Morena Baccarin might have made some weird decisions during her life for all i know, and she couldn't have known what she said yes to when she said yes to do this film. She played the wife of Brody in Homeland, and did a great job. And then the next thing i see her in is THIS!! This awful film where absolutely nothing is funny!! There aren't just a few things her that makes this completely awful. First of all the storyline is painfully bad. The build-up just breaks down, and there are scenes with characters that we totally don't care about. It's like the director didn't have a long enough script so he throws in a sex-scene that is supposed to be funny, but the hair on the back of my neck stands up, but for all the wrong reasons... I am a person who have to finish a film, and i've stopped telling people not to see films because their bad. I actually want people to see the bad films, because doing so makes us really appreciate the good ones... People's comments are obviously written by friends of the director, Michael Rosenbaum. Okay actor from Smallville who suddenly think he's gonna do a Todd Phillips-movie. He couldn't have been more wrong, so do us all a favor, please stop!! Back to people's comments: There is no chance in h**l that people can enjoy this as much as they express in here. So yeah, friends of the director! But by all means... Knock yourself out - literally :)
ramonaridgewell I just finished watching "Back in the Day" for the third time. I love this movie! It's an indie movie written and directed by Michael Rosenbaum, who also starred in it and was the executive producer. This is a sweet story about Jim, who is trying unsuccessfully to be an actor in Hollywood, and his attempt to recapture some of his youth and maybe find the meaning of happiness by returning to his small town in Indiana for a class reunion. While the ensuing madness is littered with potty humor, I still connected with the story, perhaps because it could have been the small town I grew up in.After arriving in Newburgh, Jim immediately falls back in with his group of high school buddies and they revert to their old selves, getting drunk, getting revenge for old grievances, and maybe falling back in love. The group, including Jim's former lover, Lori, soon revolves around Jim who held it together back in the day. But life has moved on and we soon find everyone's life turned upside down by Jim's return.Rosenbaum did a fine job on his first foray into writing and directing a full-length movie. The story is solid. The scenery around his home town is beautiful and used to good effect. The music from the late '80's is fitting.Perhaps because Rosenbaum was writing about his actual friends, the characters feel authentic and we are able to relate to them as real people. His town rallied around him and almost all of the movie was filmed there on location. The modest homes were real, as was the bar where they hang out, and the high school where the reunion dance is held. I remember the same kind of people and places from my own teen-age years. I was comfortable with this movie and enjoyed it tremendously. If you wait through the credits, there is a memorial to the actual Skunk (Jon Snyder), who passed away late last year, as well as a recent photo of Rosenbaum and his high school buddies.If you are looking for a feel-good comedy, I would definitely recommend buying "Back in the Day".