Diner

A group of tight-knit childhood friends gather together during the Holiday Season, real world responsibilities clashing with rambunctious innocence, as traditional character flamboyantly illustrates, and habitual boredom is resolutely challenged.

Robert Sheftell (Mickey Rourke) overflows with appealing audacity which local residents find irresistible, apart from the bookies with whom he makes bets, without the requisite cash to cover them.

William Howard (Tim Daly) is considering a Masters but his old school sweetheart's pregnant (Kathryn Dowling as Barbara), and has a career of her own, and doesn't want to get married.

Edward Simmons (Steve Guttenberg) isn't as scholastically endowed, but will agree to get married, if his partner can pass his prick of a football test, what a fan, what a disgraceful romantic.

Laurence Schreiber (Daniel Stern) can't find things to talk about with his wife (Ellen Barkin as Beth Schreiber) and critiques her disregard for his record collection, still finding it more entertaining to chill out with his friends, selling TVs by day, doing whatever by night.

Timothy Fenwick Jr. (Kevin Bacon) can't grow up either although he's less responsibly attached or attuned, his older brother thinking he's up to no good, his unorthodox shenanigans proving his point.

They're chillin' in the same neighbourhood where they grew up, their plans hatched in a popular local diner.

Where eccentrics and stock characters alike.

Frequent the tastes of 1950s America.

Diner celebrates young adult antics as they reckon with cultural codes, innate desires to persevere carefree encountering disorienting sober perplexities. 

It's a classic case of trying to find something to do when everything's been done and what's left you mistrust, emerging from teenage triumph and adolescent angst to discern discrepancy with bewildered consequence.

Fortunately bucolic history and reliable community observe and interact, mistakes forgiven impulses soothed hypotheses tested ridiculousness nurtured. 

The limits tightening although not without friendly moments of clarity and avuncular understanding.

It's pretty strait-laced peeps striving to create with the domains of family, church, and football, rebellious instincts paradigmatically ensconced within nightly news broadcasts and 9 to 5 days.

Not without its charm through its general relevance to volatile small town/suburban life.

Boredom boxed, mischief manifested.

Resilient friendship.

Fries and gravy.