Movie Reviews

Igby Goes Down (2002 Theatrical Release)

Directed by Burr Steers

Igby Goes Down is a nasty little movie.  Keiran Culkin plays the title role in another teenage coming of age with the world on my shoulders film.  Our introduction to Igby is a scene of him placing a plastic bag over his mothers head and suffocating her.  A story is then told in flashback and extra, extra flashback of the series of events that led to this  apparent murder.

Igby’s  family life is severely messed up.  His father is in an asylum, his mother seemingly has no maternal feelings for him and his brother (Ryan Phillipe) is the good son, a young republican who delights in retelling Igby’s failures to anyone who’s around.  Igby’s  been kicked out of almost every school in the region, so he rebels against his family, drops out of school altogether and tries to hide out in the big city.

While all of this is happening his mother becomes terminally ill in Washington D.C.  Igby couldn’t care less.  He is living it up with some archetypical bohemian characters in New York.  His godfather (Jeff Goldblum) puts him to work on one of his high rent downtown lofts.  Igby’s odyssey finds him being attracted to and of course eventually bedding Goldblum’s mistress (Amanda Peet.)  Through a series of events their tryst and the exposure of Igby’s hideout lead to Goldblum’s breakup with Peet and her gratuitous drug overdose.

Igby seems better suited for Claire Daines, a caterer at Goldblum’s swanky party.  Their relationship is antagonistic at first.  She refuses to let him bum a Clove cigarette.  But Igby’s charm and sense of humor eventually get to her and lead Igby to what he believes is a serious relationship.  Unfortunately Igby’s naiveté does not prepare him for what happens next and his fragile world is shaken even further.

This movie is essentially about an angry young man finding his place in a cruel world.  “I’m drowning in assholes,” Igby says towards the film’s end.  Indeed he is.  Every main character in the film is entirely unlikable for many different reasons.  Goldblum who becomes a surrogate father figure is solely motivated by money.  This interests Igby’s economic majoring brother immensely but does nothing for Igby, who is portrayed by Caulkin as insightful and funny.  He’s smarter than everyone else but still an enormous prick.  We realize toward the end that Igby empathizes with his father, but is determined not to let his depression make him obsolete. 

Igby Goes Down is a dark comedy.  The humor, however is almost always at the expense of another character in the film.  There are some good lines and clever gags, but they don‘t add up to anything substantial.  Everyone is so goddamned bitter about being rich and white in the big city.  There’s not a single lighthearted moment in the entire picture.  Igby’s inevitable redemption at the end leaves us wanting to believe that in twenty years will he be the conqueror of all the artificiality and self destructive behavior that surrounds him.  More than likely he will end up like all of the rest. (Dave Ignizio)

One Hour Photo (2002 Theatrical Release)

Directed by Mark Romanek

One Hour Photo is Robin Williams’ last ditch effort to retain his credibility and although he proves he is more than capable of taking on the role of a psychopath, the film just doesn’t cut it.  The plot concerns Cy the photo guy’s unhealthy obsession with the bland, upwardly mobile Yorkin family.  He has been processing their film for years and seems to know every little detail of their life.  The little boy feels sorry for Cy, but the parents don’t really give him a second thought.  They’re too wrapped up in their world of gourmet ice cream and Range Rovers.  Cy discovers a set of photos that implicate Bill in an extramarital affair and is inexplicably crushed by this information.  The photos, by the way, are ridiculously glossy glamour shots.  It’s also a bit strange that they feature both Bill and his mistress in a perfectly framed snapshot, like anyone holds a camera away from them, taking photos of themselves making out.   Regardless these photos and Cy’s subsequent firing from his job as the photo processor at a pseudo Wal-Mart called Sav-mor lead him to do some pretty ghoulish things.  I guess.  Anyway what actually ends up happening is unintentionally humorous and positively underwhelming.

One Hour Photo is a kind of a half-assed homage to Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom.” Like that infinitely better, film it makes you feel sympathetic to the villain.  In this movie’s case that’s not too hard.  The Yorkin family is so boring that you wish Williams would just dispose of them all within the first hour and be done with it.  There are some nice touches, particularly in set design and cinematography.  The antiseptic interiors of the Save-mor mirror the outward demeanor of Cy.  After he is fired a tracking shot follows him through the store and past a wall of television sets displaying a raging fire.  Director Mark Romanek can’t help himself from throwing in some leftover shock moments from Nine Inch Nails videos here and there.  Overall, it has the feel and mood of the psychological thriller down, but the story is empty.  In the end it’s just a morality play and the conclusion and final coda are genuine groan out loud moments. (DI)