Though set in the early '80s, it's necessary only to listen to the soundtrack of writer/director Susan Skoog's film Whatever to realize that the movie is not just another retro nostalgia trip. Peppered with such distinctly '70s acts as The Ramones, The Stooges, David Bowie, Blondie, Patti Smith, and The Jam, Whatever comes closer to Dazed And Confused: The Next Generation, minus the kitsch. Liza Weil plays a proto-slacker high-school student somewhere in New Jersey, who is faced with such incipient red-letter issues as drug use and casual sex, not to mention her immediate, post-grad future. Often pressured by her troubled friend (Chad Morgan, who is introduced in the midst of what is essentially a gang rape), Weil finds out the hard way that experience and maturity are not the same thing. Skoog wisely skirts After-School Special-ish moralizing, allowing her protagonist to wander rudderless through a sea of ugly temptation and unsavory characters. Unlike such brightly lit cotton candy as The Wedding Singer, Whatever actually looks like a product of the early '80s, when film stock was gritty and teenagers were grittier. The movie only falters with Dan Montano's unlikely hood-with-a-conscience, a coke dealer with a heart of gold who frequently offers Weil sound stay-out-of-trouble advice. Yet this is the closest Skoog comes to explicitly drawing the line between good and bad, and the rest of Whatever breathes with an uneasy verisimilitude.