Initial Reaction: "Oh right! I have ice cream in the freezer..."I'm what some might call a kind of movie purist. As some of you already know, I avoid watching a movie if I'm not in the mood for it. It must be completed from beginning to end in one sitting. Talking or any kind of discussion should not be taking place. Laugh at funny parts, cry at sad parts, but don't interchange the two (unless the movie is notably bad). If I watch a film that I've heard too much about before seeing it, it's been tainted.
Igby Goes Down was sitting on my kitchen table for weeks, waiting for my roommate to watch it before returning it to a friend. I'd never heard of it, but the cast caught my eye. The movie stars Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon, Claire Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Ryan Phillippe, Bill Pullman, and Amanda Peet. It was enough to make me want to watch, but not enough to make me carve out a chunk of time in my busy schedule. So I did the unthinkable: I watched it in pieces. Three pieces to be exact, and I'm not sure if this ruined the movie for me. But something did.
It's the story of Igby, the youngest of two sons in a rich yet highly dysfunctional family. He flunks out of schools, gets thrown into military school to teach him a lesson, and things start going, well, down. He's assumed the mantle of "problem child," and doesn't seem to be too upset about it. Igby is played by Kieran Culkin, and I'm not sure that was such a good idea. I can see what they were trying to do, Culkin definitely displays apathy well, but that's really all he's got. I'm not really sure what else there's supposed to be. At a couple of points it seemed as though he was torn or upset or something, but the two sides (indifference and despair) didn't gel. And there's something about him--not sure what it is--but it's like he should be screaming...hands on his face...pulling pranks on burglars...
The rest of the cast really surprised me. So much talent and quality to deliver so little. Susan Sarandon plays Igby's demanding, drunk, cold mother Mimi who seems more concerned with keeping up appearances (and keeping medicated) than dealing with the family problems. She, along with Bill Pullman grant us some quite good performances as Igby's parents. Pullman almost succeeds at breaking the heart of the viewer in his role of the frustrated, desperate father who eventually loses his mind (some of the best scenes include him). But, since we really have no idea what's going on with him, he elicits more pity than anything else.
Ryan Phillippe is Igby's brother, Oliver, and I think the best way to sum up his character is: bastard. He isn't the rebel in the family that Igby is, but he's far from being the good one. He treats Igby in some awful ways, and yet somehow you get the (small) sense that he cares. Just a little, though. I think Claire Danes as Sookie stands out to me the most, and seemed to be the most promising. She and Igby become friends and then lovers, and she starts off as the bright spot in the film. Then more crap happens, and she falls into the dumpster with all the rest of the characters. Oh well, she tried.
I'm really not sure what else to say. I felt like I was being baited numerous times throughout Igby Goes Down, but with nothing to sink my teeth into. While the acting is great, character development is poor in all cases, and the result is a crappy main character in crappy situations stuck with crappy peripheral characters in his life. My initial reaction isn't an exaggeration: the movie is completely forgettable, because there's nothing to keep with you after you walk away from it. There was a lot of potential, though. There were so many times when I was thinking "Finally! we're getting somewhere. Tell me about this story. Show me this person." But it never actually happens. We're kept on the surface of things, and I cannot name one character from this large, talented cast with a distinguishable motivation.
This is surprising, because it's this type of coming-of-age tale that usually dives into the substance and persona of its main character. And so much happened to Igby, it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that I still don't really know who he was or why he did what he did. There were two, maybe three times that I think the director thought he was showing us the real Igby, but really, they were just disconnected emotional scenes.
Rating: -1
As much as I was disappointed by the film, I felt that the performances salvage it from complete failure. So much potential, so little substance, this colorful story with a jarring plot surprisingly delivers apathy at its most apathetic, so that's what it gets from me. Apparently, Igby goes down. Too bad.
7 comments:
I feel as though I need to add an addendum:
I know that my review doesn't delve much into the plot. In my opinion, that's the director's fault, and not mine. But basically, Igby gets sent into military school, runs away, and hangs out in Manhattan living off of other people's charity. That's it, in a nutshell.
I totally agree, WLC. I watched this movie awhile ago, but I remember finishing it with a tangible sense of, "That's it?"
And it's baffling how underwhelming it is. The characters suggest so much depth from the very get-go. But they never really get much beyond the suggestion of depth.
Essentially, you can get the same character depth watching the Weather Channel for 90 minutes.
you didn't say anything about Jeff Goldblum! he's not one of my favorite actors, but he is one of my favorite Hollywood personalities. what does he do, and how does his performance stack up?
Yeah, I know I kinda skipped over Goldblum and Peet.
Goldblum played another rich bastard character as Igby's godfather D.H. It's a different part for him, but he played it well. He was always saying things like "Igby, my boy!" and "You've got to learn your responsibility!" He is cheating on his wife with Peet, who plays an artist taking advantage of the fact that he has money.
Goldblum's character development wasn't terrible. He starts off as someone who stands up for Igby and cheers him on a few times, but then things start to fall apart for him, too, when Peet has a thing with Igby. It gets pretty twisted.
Two observations on WLC's last post.
First: it's amazing that, in a movie wherein the main character has a fling with godfather's mistress, nothing actually happens. But it's true.
Second: WLC, how was this a different part for Goldblum? It seemed to me like he brought the same Goldblum ethos to another Goldblumian character.
Ummmm...ok, I shouldn't have said that it was a different character for him. I haven't really seen him in much. But in my experience, he's been a likeable and funny character. But that's very limited. :)
In my opinion, and especially given the film's teasers and the way it was sold at the time, Igby Goes Down is nothing more than another film for Amanda Peet to show off her goods the way she did in The Whole Nine Yards a couple of years earlier. And no, this does not make a film good.
I think -1 is way too generous for this one.
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