Hey folks, Harry here... Here we have a Quint said, Massawyrm said ... review of IGBY GOES DOWN. Now 19 times out of 20 I side up with Quint on films - and I'm no where near that sort of ratio with Massawyrm. And usually it comes to films like this one, the movies that ask a bit more of the audience in terms of setting aside their own importance and just let the film happen to you. To not sit above or in judgement of the film. Now I don't know what I'll think of this film, but reading Quint's review I can see where he is coming from... and I could imagine possibly arguing with Massawyrm about his review. Hmmm, I should see this movie if for no other reason than to check which I am... a Quint or a Massawyrm... How about you?
Ahoy squirts! Quint, the crustiest of the seaman, here with my views on the new "big indie" flick, IGBY GOES DOWN, starring the most talented (in my opinion) of the seeming thousands of Culkin children, Kieran Culkin, as well as Susan Sarandon, Bill Pullman, Amanda Peet, Jeff Goldblum, Claire Danes and Ryan Phillippe.
I went to this movie knowing nothing of the story and ignorant of most of the cast. I had heard some good things about it, nothing really specific, just general positivity. The movie is basically about a severely dysfunctional family: Nutball father (Pullman), psycho-bitch, pill addicted mother (Sarandon), preppy older son (Phillippe) and troublemaking Igby, the youngest son, played by Kieran Culkin. The movie is really about Igby trying to distance himself from his family, the people he hates the most, while at the same time dealing with their undeniable influence on him as a person...
I know, it sounds boring, but it really isn't. The only thing I found wrong at all with the movie was the beginning... The editing, the shots and angles... It all sorta screamed out, "Look at me! I'm an indie film! I can be different!" But after about 5 minutes, when the story actually started happening, I found myself drawn into Igby's world. I don't know if I really wanted to be pulled into his world full of gray skies, sleazy people and heartbreak... Well, maybe I wanted to be there to boink Claire Danes, too, but you know what I mean. It isn't a very pleasant world, but that's the whole point of the movie.
Despite the sorta pretentious beginning, I feel the movie avoids pretension for its duration. Sure, it takes itself seriously, but not so seriously it stops being funny or uninvolving. I'm a very giving audience member. On most movies I can put up with a certain amount of bad acting, bad writing, bad direction... But the one thing that turns me off a movie quicker than any other is pretension... And I really dug IGBY GOES DOWN.
Also I love a movie that can showcase great acting from actors who I love that you usually don't see given those great moments that can show them at their finest. In this case it was Bill Pullman's character, the kind father who is being pushed by his wife and life quicker and quicker down the spiral staircase that ends up in the nuthouse. He's not in the movie much, but every frame of the film he appears in sticks with you. In a way he haunts the movie. His presence is always felt, the haunted look in his eyes... His breakdown and his final scene in the movie are amazingly effective to the point where you want to cry for him... and for Igby, too.
The acting is superb all across the board. Goldblum is great as Igby's super rich yuppie (in all the worst ways) Godfather. Sarandon does her job so well I glared at the poster for THE BANGER SISTERS when I came out of the theatre, thinking, "You cold bitch." Guess it's time to rewatch THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW to remember how much I love Susan Sarandon. Phillippe is entirely convincing as the young republican older brother. Amanda Peet does a really good job in the film as well, as the struggling artist stuck in an unhealthy symbiotic relationship with the married Goldblum. Peet usually annoys the fuck out of me for some reason, but she gives a solid and heartbreaking performance in this film. Danes is also well cast as the main love interest for Igby, a pseudo-intellectual New Yorker.
Kieran Culkin carries this movie without a problem. If he failed at doing so, the whole film would have crumbled around him. No matter how great Pullman or Sarandon or Goldblum or Danes was, they are all there to help us understand Igby. As it was the second I saw THE MIGHTY, my opinion is that Kieran Culkin has succeeded where his other siblings have failed. As much as I love Rory Culkin in SIGNS (as well as his turn as the young Igby in this film) he still has that Culkin trademarked breathy line delivery and looks freakishly like Macaulay.
I have to admit that while I liked the movie I do realize it isn't for everyone. It's a far cry from a mainstream movie. Matter of fact, while I was watching the movie I kept thinking how much it felt like I was at a film festival. It feels like a movie you'd catch at a film festival and go, "You know what? That's pretty damn good. The general public and average movie goer would probably not like it a lot, but fuck 'em. It's a cool flick." I'm not entirely sure why I felt that way when watching it, but I'll be damned if I didn't feel that way.
So, this won't be everyone's bag. I recommend it to those who love going to film festivals and finding that off-beat gem and those that love to see great acting. This isn't a trendy dark indie comedy, more like a sad comedy... but the more I think back on it, the more I find myself liking the film. It'll be one that'll make you think a bit after the lights come up. Love it or hate, it'll affect you.
That's it from me, squirts. I'll be out in Los Angeles next week to party down with Moriarty and the rest of the gang while watching Roger Avary's THE RULES OF ATTRACTION. If any of you folks want to hang out, drop me an email at the link below! Farewell and adieu.
-Quint
And now for Massawyrm...
Hola all. Massawyrm here with a look at the sorry state of affairs with the film "Igby Goes Down". Man, I wish I could say that I didn't know what went wrong here, that this was just an indie mess created by a first time director, that maybe, just maybe, the writer/director was a moron and made a bad film. But I can't say any of that. This movie is neither unintelligent nor unintelligible. The problem is that this movie epitomizes everything that I detest about the New York Film scene and boils it down to it's most bitter roots.
Now I don't hate the East Coast film scene, I really don't. It has a distinctive look and feel that you simply can't just love or hate. But there are certain eccentricities that you cannot deny are prevalent in the scene. Most notably, the pretentious posturing of virtually every character in most of the distributed works. Everyone is well read. Everyone is arrogant. Everyone looks down on the lessers of society. And the directors tend to allow this to be rampant. It's been loosed out of the box and gone well beyond parody. It's become the staple. And yet, the bulk of these New York directors feel that we as audiences will find this endearing. They're not mocking these attitudes, they're embracing it and giggling over their keyboards at their own ingenuity as every line spouts off with "witty repartee" and literary sub-references for the upper crust crowds that will attend their New York screenings in black turtlenecks and berets, sipping their wine at after parties discussing the genius of their work, utilizing more syllables than the law should allow. Pretension. Yeah, that about sums it up.
"Igby Goes Down" is a festering pile of pretentiousness, written and directed by someone who obviously wishes they were writing novels instead. You know, maybe Burr Steers doesn't wish that, but "Igby Goes Down" sure makes it feel like he does. Almost the whole of the movie is stiff and forced, like a bad play, each of the actors doing just fine in their roles, but never really achieving any type of chemistry with the rest of the cast. This is yet another one of those films in which a group of wacky, dysfunctional characters are slapped together and are forced to coexist within a set of parameters revolving around the plight of the main character. And what a main character we have here folks.
Igby. Aka Holden Caulfield. Yes, that's right, the dysfunctional, unlikable youth of 'Catcher in the Rye' returns, or rather is pretty much lifted and placed in the upper crust, richboy world of New York elite. Now Kieran Culkin (Dangerous Life of Altar Boys) does a great job in his portrayal of Igby, and seems to do the best he can with a character with absolutely no redeeming value or likability whatsoever. Igby is that uncle most of us has, the one that vanishes for months or years at a time and is spoken of at family gatherings with little fondness and constant eyerolls when discussing his 'adventures' as of late. Have you ever wanted to see a film about your uncles meanderings as a late teen/young adult? Well now you can. And you still won't like him. Despite Steers best efforts to define Igby as a fragile, messed up kid with obvious reasons for his actions, he never gives us one tangible reason to like him. And we don't like the rest of the cast either. In fact, they're absolutely detestable.
One. One endearing character. Bill Pullman. And he's completely insane. He vanishes 10 minutes into the film. Gone. Goodbye. Oh, he pops back up a couple more times, but never long enough for us to get attached.
Everyone else is just plain unlikable. The cast gives pretty good performances (except in the beginning when there are way too many hamfisted attempts at humor that tend to fall very flat) and once they hit their groove about mid movie you understand where everyone is coming from. You just really can't like where any of them are coming from. Every time a single character does something that puts them on the road to your forgiving them their character flaws they turn right around and prove themselves to be the terrible person you originally thought them to be. The men are all smarmy, sleazy pricks with zero charisma and the women are a misogynists wet dream, angry, drug abusing nymphomaniacs who can't keep from fucking anything that moves. It's ridiculous, but to the point that its not funny, not for a moment. It's pathetic but not so pathetic that you care.
Not to say that the film doesn't have its moments. There are a few, a rare few, moments in which there is genuine chemistry between the actors that actually reels you in and lets you care about them for a scene. One scene in particular between Ryan Phillippe and Culkin that really delivers a feeling that these guys are brothers and drives home the context of their relationship, but its so close to the final frame that it's too little, too late. You just don't care anymore because you were never allowed to care in the first place.
At the same time there were a few interesting moments where the subtext was just right to make a point without a single word being spoken. But even then, those moments serve to enrich the vileness of each of the characters traits rather than make them more tolerable.
Essentially Igby is the bad seed. He has been kicked out of every boarding school on the east coats and proceeds to get kicked out of every other type of school he attends. He's cheeky little rascal bent on irritating or provoking almost everyone around him. His brother (Ryan Phillippe reprising his role from Cruel Intentions) is the good brother, acing his way through school and managing to be a royal prick virtually every time he pops into frame. Their father (Pullman) is in an Asylum for Schizophrenia and their mother (played brilliantly by Susan Sarandon) is a complete harpy and is either really sick or a hypocondriac (Steers never bothers to confirm this, but hints at the latter). The boys godfather, D.H. (played by Jeff Goldblum finally shaking that pesky Jeff Goldblum Science Guy PHD Explains-It-All character, and doing a damn fine job of it) is a two-timing letch and altogether sleazeball who provides the lightest, most amusing moment in the film.
Igby, just plain pissed about his lot in life and deathly afraid of suffering from a breakdown similar to his fathers tries to get away from it all by fleeing school, running away from it all and living a bohemian New York lifestyle. But he just can't get away. That's pretty much the movie. It takes about 15 minutes to set up and another 82 minutes of snide remarks, characters lying to one another and screwing each other over to play out.
Not exactly the best way to spend 97 minutes.
"Igby Goes Down" was a miserable experience for me from opening frame to the final credits and managed to give me only a handful of brief smirks at the humor that was drown out in all the mirth. I didn't laugh once. Some of the audience laughed through the first third of the movie, but soon the laughter faded and the jokes that continued just felt sterile in the ensuing silence. However, if you're the type of person who enjoys simply watching strong performances of fucked up characters and have no need to care about any of them, then this movie might be right up your alley. It certainly wasn't up mine.
Until next time friends, smoke 'em if ya got 'em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
Have you heard of the new Tic Tac that cures the common cold?
