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Diner

Play trailer Poster for Diner R,  1982,  1h 50m,  Comedy/ Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist 90% 51 Reviews Tomatometer 77% 5,000+ Ratings Popcornmeter
90% Tomatometer 51 Reviews 77% Popcornmeter 5,000+ Ratings
Billy (Timothy Daly) returns home to Baltimore to serve as the best man at his upcoming wedding of his childhood buddy Eddie (Steve Guttenberg). In the meantime, he and Eddie get together with their friends at the local diner, where they trade stories about their lives. All they really want to do is go back to being the carefree boys they once were, but they know it cannot be. Their funny and at times revealing exchanges help each other face the mounting responsibility of adulthood.
Diner

What to Know

Critics Consensus

Diner transports audiences back to the 1950s with a refreshing lack of sentimentality, evoking the thrill of everyday life with its ensemble's potent chemistry and an authentic sense of spontaneity.

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Critics Reviews

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Max Weiss Baltimore Magazine Dec 8, 2023
I think it’s time to forgive Diner for being a product of its time and embrace it as the coming-of-age masterpiece it truly is. Go to Full Review
Pauline Kael The New Yorker Sep 18, 2023
Levinson never allows us to think that we know everything there is to know about these characters... Levinson doesn’t violate his characters by summing them up -- he understands that we never fully understand anybody. Go to Full Review
Robert Osborne The Hollywood Reporter Apr 4, 2022
All in all, Diner is a worthwhile dish, certainly the best thing Leo the Lion has had to roar about in some time. Go to Full Review
Yasser Medina Cinefilia May 17, 2026
5/10
It's a Levinson comedy-drama that gets pretty boring when it turns into an exercise in episodic conversations about adult everyday life, as flat as the surface of a restaurant table. [Full review in Spanish] Go to Full Review
Richard Freedman Newark Star-Ledger Jan 7, 2026
The ensemble of its as yet little-known cast is a joy to watch. Go to Full Review
Chance Solem-Pfeifer Willamette Week Sep 19, 2025
Never did the decade of peak “men were men” get a clearer retroactive treatment of men being overgrown boys than Barry Levinson’s Diner. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Jan 31, 2019 The best comedy movie ever made!
Hermione S Dec 8, 2018 Have the pleasure to watch these young ensemble of great actors in "Diner", is death, and I mean it in the best way possible, but what I enjoyed the most is the writing! The dialogs are funny, simple and most importantly they feel real, authentic. Loved the music and settings too. ps: it seems like comedy from all decades is still fun, except the 90s. The 90s sucked. See more
Aug 20, 2018 The rare movie that you wish didn't end
Anakin P Jun 9, 2017 Genius, one of the best scripts ever. I always see something new to admire on each viewing.
Hermione R Mar 23, 2017 A fun, nostalgic trip to a simpler time. Not much happens, but these guys sitting around talking is infectious and realistic.
Albus S Mar 14, 2017 3/5 Stars. A decent film, if pretty empty of plot. The director admitted he structured it very much like a proto-Seinfeld, where the everyday stuff that goes on is the story in and of itself. That said, it doesn't flow nearly as well and just kind of plods along without much direction. It's meant to be a Guy Film, in that it's primarily about a group of young guys doing young guy stuff: fighting, arguing, chasing girls, driving fast cars, etc. Ironically, I found the most compelling portion of the film to be the scenes involving Mickey Rourke (who is damn near unrecognizable to the modern eye) and Ellen Barkin, as well as the prelude featuring Daniel Stern (Marv from Home Alone, wut), which covered Barkin's character's failing marriage to Stern's and her subsequent comfort found in the arms of Rourke. Barkin's acting in these scenes was superb, I should note. Rourke had been the suave playboy up to this point in the film, and seduced Barkin into having sex with him so as to pay off a debt (long spoiler story), but just as he's about to get her to the apartment, he decides it's wrong. The film does a good job of building Rourke up as fairly unscrupulous, so this comes as a bit of a surprise. A couple of other scenes troll modern cinematic expectations well earlier on (the accident and the knife scenes), which I thought was interesting and meta. One of the highlights of the movie is the authenticity. The cars are classic 1950s, and there is a large slate of songs played mostly via radio that are rather corny by today's standards, but were current then and add to the immersion. Overall, worth a watch if you're into guy movies or period pieces set in the '50s. See more
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Diner

My Rating

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Movie Info

Synopsis Billy (Timothy Daly) returns home to Baltimore to serve as the best man at his upcoming wedding of his childhood buddy Eddie (Steve Guttenberg). In the meantime, he and Eddie get together with their friends at the local diner, where they trade stories about their lives. All they really want to do is go back to being the carefree boys they once were, but they know it cannot be. Their funny and at times revealing exchanges help each other face the mounting responsibility of adulthood.
Director
Barry Levinson
Producer
Jerry Weintraub
Production Co
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, SLM Production Group
Rating
R
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Theaters)
Apr 2, 1982, Wide
Release Date (Streaming)
Jan 1, 2008
Runtime
1h 50m
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