Floundering (1994)★ 5.8/10

R · US · 96 min · January 1, 1994

• Comedy

Directed by: Peter McCarthy

Written by: Jo Harvey Allen, John Cusack, Peter McCarthy

In this scathing and subversive social comedy, life in post riot Los Angeles is dissected under the sardonic eye of John Boyz, an unemployed thirty nothing flounderer on Venice Beach who is trying to figure out what to do with his life. John can't be bothered with apathy, but no matter how much he wants to help people, he is too immobilized to do anything useful. Haunted by chronic insomnia and impending sense of doom, all he can do is watch, and John is an avid observer. Through his voyeuristic binoculars, he struggles to make sense of all the alienation and disaffection he sees in his neighborhood. In his journal he meticulously chronicles the mundane down to steadfast march of ants across his kitchen counter. John is desperately trying to keep one meaningless day from blending into next. He compulsively watches homemade videos of LA riots looking for a clue. But everywhere around him the city's social fabric is coming apart at the seams, and now it is John Boys's own threadbare life that's about to unravel.