IGBY GOES DOWN (2002)
A Film Review
In our materialistic world the general perception of happiness is almost indistinguishable from the large sums of money. According to this worldview, people who are born in the well-to- do families are supposed to be the happiest people of all. Yet, many of those fortunate children grow up to be as dysfunctional and miserable as those who grew up in poverty. Even some Hollywood films are aware of this fact, and one of them is IGBY GOES DOWN, 2002 drama written and directed by Burr Steers.
Protagonist of the film is Igby Slocum (played by Kieran Culkin), 17-year descendant of the family of East Coast tycoons. Igby never had financial troubles in his life, but he was far from happiness, mostly thanks to his dysfunctional family. His father Jason (played by Bill Pullman) suffered mental breakdown and ended up in asylum, while mother Mimi (played by Susan Sarandon) developed pill-popping habit. His older brother Oliver (played by Ryan Philippe) grew up to be emotionally distant and ended up like college graduate with increasing Republican sympathies. Feeling alienated and being intelligent enough to see through adult hypocrisy, Igby stages his own personal rebellion by flunking all private schools his mother had enrolled him in, taking drugs and finally escaping to the bohemian underworld of Manhattan. There he would (mis)use generosity of his godfather and philandering tycoon DH (played by Jeff Goldblum) by moving into apartment of DH's mistress and aspiring artist Rachel (played by Amanda Peet). Igby starts relationship both with Rachel and with college dropout Sookie Sapperstein (played by Claire Danes), but his rebellious lifestyle, supported by drug dealing, comes to an end with a news that would confront him with some truths about his family.
Coming-of-age stories about teen angst and youths being forced to confront with the ugly realities of adulthood aren't anything particularly new, so in IGBY GOES DOWN we wouldn't see anything we haven't seen before. It is more important how the story is told, and first-time director Burr Steers does it with mixed results. IGBY GOES DOWN was originally devised as novel and this translates into film's structure - the plot is weak and the emphasis is instead on the series of mostly quirky andc usually rather dislikeable characters. Film's main problem is in the fact that one of those dislikeable characters is Igby himself. Kieran Culkin (whose brother Rory appears in the role of young Igby in childhood flashback scenes) does everything in his power to make Igby sympathetic, but the character of irresponsible, lying, cheating and drug-dealing youth is hardly any better from the dysfunctional and hypocritical adults he despises. The audience would have even less sympathies for him when his "plight" includes having sex with young gorgeous women and living in lofty artist's apartments. Another of film's problems is too drastic change of tone from sarcastic dark comedy to the depressively serious drama in the last act. However, the general impression of the film is mostly positive; many of the characters are dislikeable, but they are played by superb character actors - Bill Pullman simply shines in his small role of schizophrenic father, as well as Jeff Goldblum whose character posseses incredibly amount of creepiness in his cold, superficial kindness. Fans of MY SO CALLED LIFE and JACK & JILL would probably enjoy this film, seeing Claire Danes and Amanda Peet in major roles (and the latter using opportunity to display her breasts). The atmosphere in the film is greatly enhanced with a good, albeit non-intrusive music by Uwe Fahrenkrog Petersen. IGBY GOES DOWN is probably way below his author's lofty pretensions, but it is not a complete letdown for those who watch it.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
Review written on December 23rd 2002
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.purger.com/users/drax/reviews.htm - Movie Reviews in English http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society
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