If F. Scott Fitzgerald was a filmmaker instead of a novelist, and had he been a chronicler of the Me Decade instead of the Jazz Age, he probably would have made a movie like Metropolitan. Like Fitzgerald's best work, it is a clever depiction of a social class that are not often written about in American art, and is accessible to everyone.
That introduction might lead you to conclude that this is a film about poor migrant workers or homosexuals or other disenfranchised groups. But Metropolitan is about people who aren't disenfranchised at all- the young, white rich (although they call themselves bougiouse). When the rich are featured in movies at all they are usually portrayed as having empty lives of excess (La Dolce Vita) or happy, full lives of excess (every romantic comedy ever made). In this movie they are shown as being just like everyone else, accept with a lot more life security. In a way, some of them don't like that. Charlie (Taylor Nicholas), the group intellectual, thinks that they are doomed, because none of them will achieve anything great enough to warrant all of the breaks they've been given.
Most of the group is probably in college, although the movie never mentions that. In fact, the movie focuses solely on their social interactions. Only one parent is ever shown, despite the fact they all live at home (which is apparently socially acceptable if you have money- but then what isn't?). The group calls itself The Rat Pack and like to go to society balls and soirees together, then returning home and talking some more. Basically, they have the same social interactions that I have, but dressed in formal clothes. No one in the group drinks excessively, not because they don't enjoy it, but because they are afraid of losing their composure.
Metropolitan has only a threadbare story, mostly involving whether Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) will get back together with his old girlfriend (Elizabeth Thompson) who is now dating a notoriously cruel jerk (Will Kempe). Mostly the characters just talk to each other, about everything. The biggest difference between this group and the people I know is that they have to always pretend that they are 100% at all times. Best friends never breakdown to each other because they just can't- everything has to be surrounded by a degree of intellectual detachment, and oddly enough, I think that's a good thing.
Often when someone really likes a movie, it says more about them then it does the movie. I liked these people a lot. This is the sort of life style that I want to live- long nights of glamour and wit, in comfortable surroundings. All that was missing was a cat. I don't know if the average viewer will find this film as magical as I did, but this is an excellent film- wonderfully evocative, tremendously acted, with people you will really care about.
Like Slackers and sex, lies, and videotape, this was one of the first big movies of the modern independent film movement and one of the least typical. It's look at the upper classes not political but anthropological. It's not a screed against old money as much as it's a look into a lifestyle that's like our own, but more secure and better looking.
Metropolitan (1990)