Setting a hipster indie film in a cereal bar isn’t necessarily a bad idea.  After all, Kevin Smith made two extremely funny Clerks films set in a dumpy convienence store.  But where Clerks had lots of laughs and some bitingly crude and original dialogue, Flakes has none of the above.  It cruises along on “whimsy” until it crashes and burns into an abyss of hipster nothingness.  Flakes is more proof that indie films can be just as bad (and worse, nowadays) than the major studio summer blockbusters.  Starring the overrated emo heroine Zooey Deschanel (doing her 100th take on the Emo anti-establishment, quirky chick thing) and the Pyro guy from X-Men (unshaven and utterly useless as a pretentious, anti-capitalist liberal slacker cliche), Flakes goes nowhere slowly.  Christopher Lloyd pops up (in his pajamas, no less) as the mumbling owner of the hip cereal bar called Flakes, the setting of the film.

Flakes is a cereal bar managed by slacker Neal (the useless Pyro guy), a hipster wannabe musician who has a quirky girlfriend named Pussy Katz (and you thought The Mummy 3 had bad writing) played by Ms Deschanel.  After an “evil” corporate guy steals the idea, he builds a store across the street also called Flakes (yes, the writing is that bad), a similar cereal bar, but appealing to the Starbucks yuppie crowd.  This is prime ground for a satiric premise but the script is so lazy and self-satisfied that the cheap insults are what passes for satire.  Neal refers to his competition as the “banana republican” (the only laugh in the entire film).  The acting is poor, the momentum and good cheer non-existent.  Flakes is basically a miserable slog. 

Flakes made a whopping 778 dollars at the US box office (I looked it up).  The sad thing is there really is some talent involved here and the opening few scenes really aren’t that bad.  As the predictable and mean-spirited plot (they actually use real homeless people from a New Orleans shelter as hipster indie rock plays in the background) grinds to an end, the film gets harder and harder to sit through.  The director of this film is Michael Lehmann, the guy who directed Heathers.  What a sad state of affairs for the poor guy.  Heathers is one of the best black comedies ever made, and Flakes isn’t even as good as most of the Hollywood dreck that it smugly disdains.  A total misfire in every sense of the word.

Film Grade: D

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