Film Review: Bio-Dome (1996)

Yes, I watched Bio-Dome, and yes, I’m going to review it. I’ve been actively avoiding this movie since it came out. It was then, and is now, the exact kind of lazy, insipid, and idiotic movie that I hate. I am now dumber having watched it. Bio-Dome hits exactly zero marks when it comes to effective filmmaking. It’s poorly crafted, terribly written, horrendously acted, and boring as all hell. I did not come close to laughing even once and lost count of how many times flatulence was let loose.

I’m not going to bother summarizing the plot. It’s too dumb and pointless. What’s most interesting about Bio-Dome, though (and not in a good way) is that it could easily serve as a primer on just how much disdain corporate America had for young adults in the mid-1990s. If you were around back then, you might remember how badly young people were portrayed in the media. This wasn’t necessarily a new phenomenon, but it reached new heights with Gen-X and the slacker myth.

I was 18 when Bio-Dome came out – right there at the bottom of a sought-after demographic. Nobody, and I mean nobody, that I knew acted anything like the Bud and Doyle (Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin), the film’s “heroes” – and I hung out with punk rockers and musicians. Their portrayal as representatives of a generation might be offensive if it weren’t so utterly inane. But, they aren’t unique. Grab any movie from the second half of the ‘90s and you’ll find more of the same. Bio-Dome is a great example of money men not knowing a goddamned thing about their target audience. They thought we would mindlessly consume anything they put in front of us as long as an “extreme” veneer was placed on it. I, at least, hated that shit with a passion. But, I suppose enough teenagers bought into it to make it profitable for a time. Ugh. This trip down memory lane is depressing me.

With Bio-Dome we also get such fun cinematic elements as attempted sexual assault played for laughs and “aw shucks” toxic male behavior rewarded and looked up to. It blows my mind that the main characters can be so crass, asinine, and predatory but still be considered the good guys. They deliberately destroy everything they touch and make no apologies for it – all out of some disgusting sense of boredom and selfishness. Of course, there are no consequences for the chaos they cause because, you know, like chill out, dude.

If there was a single redeeming quality to Bio-Dome, I’d name it. There isn’t.