bix171
03-31-2003, 09:32 AM
Pretentious. Burr Steers’ directorial debut is the kind of black comedy that thinks it’s appealing to its audience by taking broad swipes at the grotesquely idle rich but in reality has less contempt for the denizens of Steers’ Manhattan social elite than for the uneducated viewers who won’t get all the literary nuances the performers pithily deliver. Steers seems to think merely being offhand is funny and every line in his screenplay keeps trying to one-up the previous one, so he has each actor hurriedly dispense droll bon mots. Not that the actors can really handle his stuff—with the exception of Ryan Phillippe, who has the preppie attitude down pat, everyone seems to be relying on their self-perceived hipness to provide appeal. The film itself is baldly influenced by J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher In The Rye” with Kieran Culkin playing a rebellious rich kid who goes on the lam from his insane family, particularly his spiteful, domineering mother (Susan Sarandon, who eventually conspires with Steers to resort to her usual technique of making a sympathy play), and hooks up with people populating his godfather Jeff Goldblum’s wealthy, art-poseur world, including Amanda Peet (grossly overplaying her stock-in-trade, the selfish bitch), Jared Harris and Claire Danes. No one has a clear sense of why they’re acting the way they do—virtually every motivation is half-realized and foreign to the viewer, with Steers’ preening insistence that we accept on faith their over-privileged lunacy without never really needing to comprehend their behavior. The viewer will quite rightfully find that isn’t nearly enough.