3 out of 4 stars.

Charm goes a very long way.

Sometimes, and more often than not, a movie does not even have to be good according to filmmaking standards that traditionally make a movie good. A movie can be sloppy, lazy, implausible, and still be totally lovable. Like the movies made by Ed Wood, sometimes a movie just needs to show that the people who made it put their goddamn hearts and souls into making it an enjoyable experience. If that feeling comes through the celluloid and through the movie screen and into the viewers hearts, you have a movie like Empire Records.

Slight rehash of the "plot", Liv Tyler, Robin Tunney, Ethan Embry, and Rene Zellweger play employees of the record store (remember those) Empire Records. The store is going to be bought out by a huge chain, so one employee gambles away the store's cash in hopes of multiplying it. He loses the cash, and sets into motion the plot to raise money to save the store. Simple, dopey, and scattershot, the movie was directed Allen Moyle who previously directed Pump Up The Volume. He and his cast show a real love for this time in 1995 and for this generation of slackers. Nothing in this movie is really "realistic": what big box music store would allow employees unlimited breaks to shave their heads, stage fake funerals, have dance parties on their roof, tackle and take a shoplifter into custody for questioning as if they were all on the police force? Realism is not the point here, the reality in which these kids wish they were living is.

There is a real joy of performing that the young cast brings to the movie; everyone here seems to be having a blast and it shows, and it is infectious. Everyone here seems to be in loving with making this movie, even if they know it is not very good by typical movie standards. The movie also boasts a killer soundtrack including but not limited to Gin Blossoms, The Cranberries, Toad The Wet Sprocket, and Better Than Ezra. Everything on display here captures the mood and feeling of mid-90's teenage workplace rebellion.

Empire Records is nowhere near as polished as that other 1995 teen comedy Clueless (which I think is a perfect movie). But the gritty grainy sloppiness and the grunge attitude towards authority, work, and rules perfectly and lovingly captures what it was like to be this age, in this time, when things were just a bit more innocent, and life was still ahead of you, rules pending.