IGBY GOES DOWN - My tepid reaction to
Igby Goes Down, a movie about a disaffected, prep school brat on the lam from his dysfunctional family in New York City, has provoked in me a bit of a personal and professional crisis. OK, “crisis” might be a little strong. But what I can't get over is how I could have an aversion to a movie that has been rightfully compared -- by every single critic who has reviewed it -- to
Catcher In The Rye. After all, I'm the guy who recently named his first-born child Holden after said book's troubled main character. I mean, what does it say about me, a 27-year-old who last read Salinger's notorious book at the tender age of 16, that I was mostly bored and annoyed with the antisocial antics of Igby Slocumb (Kieran Culkin), a modern-day Holden Caulfield if there ever was one? As a critic, I'm trying to figure out what everyone else saw in Burr Steers' screenwriting and directorial debut that I didn't.
Roger Ebert calls it "an astonishing filmmaking debut, balancing so many different notes and story elements." The
NY Times Stephen Holden dubs it "a corrosively sarcastic comedy that lifts the lid off the gleaming casserole of post-yuppie American culture." And
Slate's David Edelstein goes so far as to conclude that
Igby is "the movie of the year." Was it my after-work-10:20-on-a-Wednesday-night malaise? Or was it the slightly creepy fact that I was actually the only person sitting in the theater? Whatever it was, nothing about the film got much of a rise out of me. Scenes such as the opening sequence, featuring Igby and his young Republican brother Oliver (Ryan Phillipe) trying, unsuccessfully, to poison their prissy, domineering mother Mimi (Susan Sarandon), were designed to be amusing in their vulgarity, but fell flat instead. Steers is trying to do his best Wes Anderson impression without the chops to back it up. At one point we see Mimi in a medium shot yelling about her grapefruit that apparently wasn't prepared to her liking. D.H. Baines (Jeff Goldblum), a family friend and Igby's godfather, walks in and tells her to get off the maid. The camera pulls back and sure enough, Mimi is sitting on top of the maid. I suppose it could have been a funny little jab -- those crazy, heartless rich! -- but there was no context for it. It's a brief, semi-tasteless scene sandwiched between two unrelated scenes, and the whole first half of the film is comprised of episodic little interludes like this one that prevent the story from gaining any momentum. If it wasn't for Sarandon's amazing ability to imbue even cartoonish characters like Mimi with some humanity, my reaction to
Igby might have been more negative. In all fairness, Steers does hit some right notes. There are genuine moments of grief, where characters finally drop their ironic facades and expose their vulnerabilities, and each actor is pitch-perfect. Culkin deserves praise for bringing depth to a character who so easily could have been simply a sarcastic know-it-all. Igby gets by on his quick wit and somewhat overbearing sense of entitlement, but Culkin isn't afraid to reveal that his character really doesn't have a clue what the hell he's doing. Along with Sarandon and Phillipe, the rest of the supporting cast is also first-rate. Most notably, I was impressed with the performances of Claire Danes and Bill Pullman, two frequently disrespected actors who haven't done much recently, at least that I can recall. Danes plays Sookie Sapperstein, a fellow disenchanted teen Igby meets at a party in the Hamptons and develops a relationship with; Pullman plays Igby's schizophrenic father, Jason, who we see mainly in flashbacks to Igby's childhood. Both characters, like Mimi, are essentially parodies -- Sookie's your stereotypical upper-class, diet-pill popping, intellectually vacant college girl; Jason, at first anyway, just seems like a slightly off-kilter rich snob who is taking some time off from work because he isn't quite "well." But there's more to both characters and Danes and Pullman play all of the layers. In one flashback scene, the young Igby is brushing teeth when his dad comes in, gets in the shower in his pajamas and, basically, freaks out. It's a truly disturbing scene, not because Pullman plays Jason as some crazed lunatic who might hurt his son, but because he plays him exactly the opposite -- as a gentle man trying desperately to figure out what's wrong.
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