Lelaina Pierce (Winona Ryder) dreams of being a film director, but is working on a morning television show as a production assistant. One day she decided to record a video with her friends, in this video called "Reality bites", her friends, Troy (Ethan Hwake), Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) and Sammy (Steve Zahn) talk about their daily lives, their dreams and aspirations and lack of confidence in getting to meet those goals. Meanwhile, Lelaina must decide between two guys she is seeing, one of them is Michael (Ben Stiller), the other is his lifelong friend, Troy. Ben Stiller's first film as director in 1994 after a prolific career as an actor.