Suburbia

Indie director Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused) and Off Broadway writer-performer Eric Bogosian (Talk Radio) join forces in this adaptation of Bogosian's 1994 play, SubUrbia. Set in and around the parking lot of a 24-hour convenience store, the film stares dispassionately at the aimless exploits of a group of beautiful losers, whose dreary lives are upended one evening by the return of an old friend, Pony (Jayce Bartok), now a minor rock star. The early scenes are reasonably sharp — sometimes resembling nothing so much as a slacker version of Waiting for Godot — but the staginess gradually takes hold. B-