Perhaps you vaguely remember seeing this 1994 coming-of-age film in high school or college. Maybe you saw it because you had a crush on Ethan Hawke or Winona Ryder. You may have taken it in because you appreciated the comic genius of Ben Stiller. Or perhaps you bought a ticket because you heard that it so accurately captured the very real anxieties of single adult life after college (or in college, for that matter).

And then, maybe, there are a few of you who (like me) call this hilarious and irreverent movie one of their all-time favorites.

Written by Helen Childress and directed by Ben Stiller, Reality Bites is about five young adults who are trying to create meaning in their lives. Their personals ideals are gradually demystified and dissembled as each faces the consequences of decisions made by him or herself and those others in their circle. The protagonist, Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder), learns that intelligence does not guarantee professional or personal success, that artists must sacrifice a lot to be faithful to their vision or their goals, that safe choices can be unfulfilling, and that risky choices may produce discomfort. The bad boy that you just have to love, Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke), has to learn to be vulnerable as a son and as a romantic partner. The alternatively-cool, sassy best friend, Vickie Miner (Janeane Garofalo) has to mediate the many conflicts between her friends while facing the threat of HIV/AIDS and the reality of a career in retail (yes, the jarring juxtaposition is intended). The gay (out to everyone but his mom) character, Sammy Gray, is the loveable and funny friend-of-a-friend (he is really closer to Vickie and Troy than Lelaina), who adds a few great one-liners to the group scenes and has one important scene of his own in which he faces alienating his mother with the truth about his sexual orientation. And last but not least is the somewhat dorky but totally nice, mainstream, successful boyfriend, Michael Grates (Ben Stiller), who treats Lelaina well but who is ultimately a slave to white, middle-class American values, those values with which Lelaina is struggling. And there are lots of other funny characters (small roles), played by comic professionals like Swoosie Kurtz, Harry O’Reilly (who I adored in Homefront), and David Spade.

This movie deserves to be watched or re-watched because it will both delight and instruct you.

It will delight you with a soundtrack that will set you to singing, with one-liners that will have you roaring and snorting, a smattering of popular culture trivia that will make you nostalgic (think VH-1’s “I love the 80s” done for the early 1990s), and a sentimental treatment of that particular stage in one’s life when one cares most about friends and dating (a sentimentality that leaves saps like me feeling happy and fulfilled).

It will teach you by making you think about the ideals and comforts you had to surrender when you became an adult, by making you think about parent/child relationships and remember those moments when your parents disappointed you (and you disappointed them), and by making you reconsider what makes friendships and romantic relationships really work. This movie does not attempt to portray an ideal, only the real (and a very narrow version of the real at that—no ethnic, socioeconomic, or religious diversity here, really). But it does what it does better than any other movie I have seen.