SLC Punk!

SLC Punk! has something serious to say about the nature of youthful rebellion. Maybe. Sort of. I think. It's kind of hard to tell through most of this comedic period piece, set in Salt Lake City circa 1985. Our tour guide is Stevo (Scream's Matthew Lillard), who--along with his best friend Heroin Bob (Party of Five alum Michael Goorjian)--is among the few true punks in the conservative Utah capital during the Reagan era. That tour is mostly an anthropological dig through Stevo and Bob's twisted clique, including an independently wealthy but extremely paranoid drug dealer (Til Schweiger) and an acid casualty (Devon Sawa). Like many an independent comedy, SLC Punk! has enough frantic energy to ensure a few belly laughs; also like many an independent comedy, it often has nothing but frantic energy. For every decent gag or clever insight, there are three or four tedious, self-indulgent episodes involving Lillard railing at the camera about religious oppression or the plague of poseurs (if spittle were diamonds, his performance would be a comic gem). Then writer/director James Merendino drops the profound bombshell that kids in their rebellious phase are just conformists of a different stripe. You can file that one under "d" for "duh." Not recommended. (S. Renshaw)