I am a huge fan of Bret Easton Ellis, I traveled two hours once where he was giving a book signing. I own all of his movies--and I'll probably buy this one, just to complete the collection--but this film wasn't interesting. Forget the people who say they are self-indulgent, narcissistic, lascivious, promiscuous, drug-addled twenty somethings, I mean, that's just the characters they play. Great directing, leads the actors to not look as if they are acting, but not in this movie. Gregor Jordan messed up. The characters weren't interesting, you can have movies where the characters are cold, detached, and live meaningless lives, and make them interesting, these characters weren't interesting, I didn't care what happened next. That's all I ask from a movie, engage me. The characters lives and acts can be pointless, but they have to be interesting. It's a rule. You can make a movie with no plot, but events must happen.
What we get with this movie is a moral play. Something happens that is traditional of the Hays Code in the 1950's, where, even if it the character's don't deserve it, if they ruin the moral compass, say a girl is promiscuous, she must be punished. This film is pointless, meaningless, it's everything the characters were supposed to be but weren't, and worst of it all, the film was uninteresting. With all the bad reviews, with Bret Easton Ellis bashing the movie, I went in with low expectations, and the film was able to be lower than than those expectations. And that's really disappointing, because when I first heard about it, before there was a trailer, before the characters were nailed down, when they were still talking about one of the Olsen sisters as an actress, I was thinking this film was going to be great.
What we get with this movie is a moral play. Something happens that is traditional of the Hays Code in the 1950's, where, even if it the character's don't deserve it, if they ruin the moral compass, say a girl is promiscuous, she must be punished. This film is pointless, meaningless, it's everything the characters were supposed to be but weren't, and worst of it all, the film was uninteresting. With all the bad reviews, with Bret Easton Ellis bashing the movie, I went in with low expectations, and the film was able to be lower than than those expectations. And that's really disappointing, because when I first heard about it, before there was a trailer, before the characters were nailed down, when they were still talking about one of the Olsen sisters as an actress, I was thinking this film was going to be great.