Alright folks, this is the final look at AMERICAN PSYCHO. In the last 2 days, I have received 4 reviews. 3 gut wrenchingly negative reviews. And 1 positive. There is a reason. THIS MOVIE SUCKS BALLS my friends. I love ultra-violent movies. I love serial killer movies. I love black deep dark satire. I love eighties references. However, I loathe pretentious loads of crap with enough material to fill a fifteen minute short. Now mind you... it'd make a great 15 minute short. Now, though I feel that AMERICAN PSYCHO is an excruciating piece of shit.... I will acknowledge that there exists some folks out there that actually... while tasting what I consider shit, will turn around and declare this to be fudge. Look at my waist! Do you think I don't know what FUDGE tastes and looks like? This is shit, complete with gobs of corn kernals. There are some spoilers here, but if you've read the book... you know the spoilers. Except the ending is... well fucked to hell. Sigh. I'm calm.... here we go, the first review...
Hello. Long-time reader, first time writer, blah blah blah. My campus (just a wee bit North of you) had a free prescreening of American Psycho tonight, so I went.
My day had been great so far. I found out that a 8-page paper I thought was due on Thursday was due next Tuesday. I watched A New Hope this afternoon. And I picked up a used copy of The Sixth Sense on DVD for $15. Life was good and I was looking forward to the movie, as I generally dig dark\sick comedies.
Then disappointment set in. Despite really WANTING to like it, I didn't. And it lost more of my attention the further it went on. What's worse, this is my least favorite kind of movie - the kind that had some good ideas and COULD have been great, but instead was completely mishandled.
What went wrong? A)The director. I don't care if she directed "I Shot Andy Warhol." The direction in this movie had all the subtlety of a Gallagher skit, and every single little satirical nuance was pounded into the skulls of every viewer, just in case they might miss something.
Every good idea was overplayed. The "business card envy" gag was funny the FIRST time. After that scene then went on for about twice as long as it should have, and the gag was later repeated AGAIN, having lost all its humor long before. There were a couple interesting shots at the beginning where Christian Bale's face was half-shrouded in darkness. Some lighting person had great fun giving him a literal two-face. However, they proceeded to do that over and over and over in case anyone missed it the first five times. This happened throughout the whole movie.
B)Christian Bale. He's a good actor. I've liked him in everything I've seen him in. Except this. His performance grated on my nerves like razors on a chalkboard from the beginning. His character is SO self-centered, narcisistic, and obnoxious that I fail to see how anyone outside of his circle of execs could stand him. I realize this is what the character should be like, but he overplayed it so badly that it almost became a joke itself. A bad one.
(As a side note, his American accent was not that great.)
And C)The music (score) was some of the worst, most overbearing and melodramatic I've ever heard. And being a score buff, I've heard a lot. It distracted from every scene that didn't have enough deficencies to begin with.
I'm not going to ruin it, but I guarantee the ending will piss off just about everyone in the audience.
In order to start a self-affirmation society, I will also mention that my roommate who went with me also hated it. Most of the audience around me seemed to love it, except for the ending. I will refrain from making any comments regarding comparative intelligences.
I will also mention that my opinion of this is in no way related to the murders or sex in the film. By about the halfway mark, I was so bored I was WISHING for more violence just because I could try to play spot-the-bloodbag or something. A couple people did walk out, but not many.
This movie had a lot of great ideas. I kept feeling like so many of the scenes and gags would have been wonderful under the hands of a more skilled director. I suspect Bale's performance may be her fault as well. And when you're watching a movie and sitting there thinking "Wow, wouldn't this have been good if Dave Fincher had directed it?" there's something wrong.
My advice is to just watch A Clockwork Orange again.
Call me Wizard X
And here's Benwah Balls....
hey harry i saw american psycho today as part of some college special screening program and thought since you didn't have a review up, i'd write one...so here goes.
first and foremost i must say american psycho was truly a horrible movie. this is not to sat that it didn't entertain me because it truly did. the fact is the movie was ludicrous, ridiculous, and poorly acted...or was it? the script follows ellis' novel to a degree and is written in the same style of ellis'. this style however, makes for lousy dialogue and characters that come off as "fake". christian bale's performance can be summed up as different. in his bad acting (whether purposely or not), bale comes off as truly psycho. no performances stood out as being good or commendable and the movie itself was laughed at by every member of the audience. this movie cannot be taken seriously. the movie does raise one question though, how in the world did someone spend a million plus on a movie they know isn't very good.
benwah balls signing off
p.s. sorry for such a bad review
And now for Guy's review...
Folks-
Just saw American Psycho at one of those campus freebie screenings. Let me advise you to steer far away from this smug, self-important stinker. A more detailed review:
American Psycho, the new film from writer-director Mary Harron (I shot Andy Warhol) from a novel by Brent Easton Ellis, is meant as a black comedy, I think. This smug, self-important film has too many (mostly bad) gags that it can't be a drama, and the film isn't scary at all, ruling out the possibility of it being considered a thriller or horror film. But as a black comedy it fails miserably. A black comedy's purpose is usually to satirize the society it parodies. On that account the film, set in the eighties heyday of Reaganomics and stock brokers, fails to achieve any sense of urgency. And its message equating Eighties-style predatory capitalism and actual violent, predatory behavior seems forced and out-of-date. Plus Harron's style is often so outrageous and unecessarily arty that it provides unintended laughs that are funnier than the ones she and cowriter Guinevere Turner actually put into the mostly silly script.
The plot concerns Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), Wall Street coporate smoothie and apparent serial killer. When he's schmoozing and snorting up in impossibly posh bars and clubs with fellow Armani-suited coporate types, he's killing call girls and rivals with blunt instruments such as nailguns and chainsaws. When a competitor, Paul Allen (Jared Leto in a role which I assume is not at all based on the real-life Microsoft co-founder of the same name) shows off business cards that are much sleeker than Bateman's, Pat invites him over for drinks. He then proceeds to litterally ax his rival while giving a longwinded critique of Huey Lewis and the News. Unfortunately Allen's disappearance does not go unoticed and soon private detective Kimbal (Willem Dafoe) is hot on his tail, or is he?
This is one of those films where nothing is what it seems. Unfortunately Harron never gives any reason for that. Events may or may not have happened, but whether they did or not seems to be of little concern to anyone. This ambiguity could be interesting if it existed for a reason. Unfortunately there is no reason or logic to it. It's just ambiguity fo ambiguity's sake and serves no purpose. And that's just the least of the film's problems. Bale's Bateman is a one-dimensional cardboard cutout. Frankly Leo DiCaprio had his priorities set correctly when he dropped this role like a hot-potato after Titanic. Leto barely has time to register before he's offed. And Dafoe's detective is a joke who shows up seemingly ready to nail Bateman only to drop it all halfway through the film. As Bateman's ditz girlfriend, Reese Witherspoon has little to do. The only sympathetic character is Bateman's secretary, played by Chloe Sevigny with the same sense of lost innocence she brought to her earlier performances in Last Days of Disco and Kids (both of which were far better movies, and better roles for Sevigny). Unfortunately she too has little to do until the film's muddled conclusion, with the execption of a very uneventful and unecessary date with Bateman, which is supposed to make him at least appear to have a conscience; Unforunately the scene does nothing but kill time.
But the most obvious fault is Harron's hilariously inept attempts at stylization. One sequence, a direct rip from Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so ridiculous it left me in stiches (and I'm sure will provide the freudian scholars out there plenty to discuss). And then there's the credits sequence where what at first seems to be blood turns out to be raspberry sauce being poured over an elaborate dessert. And the entirely too ironic choice of bad eighties music (when Bateman's taking out Allen he's listening to Huey Lewis and the News belt out "It's great to be square"), complete with Bateman's annoying dissertations on them (in addition to his speech about Huey Lewis, he also gives his unwanted views on Whitney Houston and Phil Collins). Finally there's the out-there ending which starts off with a surreal atm shooting and then degenerates further into uneeded weirdness before resolving itself with a smug "wink wink was it all real or not?" borrowed from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Ultimately American Psycho is a hyperstylized, unecessary and unecessarily self-important film. Harron clearly thinks she is saying something profound by having the predator-capitalist actually be a psycho killer, but it's nothing we haven't seen before and better (heck RoboCop covered the same territory much more effectively). What she's actually turned out is a worthless waste of celluoid trying to pass itself off as somehow profound.
- Guy
And then here we have Gacy's positive review....
Hello Harry,
I was at the NY screening of American Psycho last night and wow what a film. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did. There were many celebrities there (the films stars) as well as Christopher Reeve and Michael Stipe of REM. The head of Lions Gate got up there and made a joke about how this was the long awaited sequel to American Beauty.
So the film itself is not so much violent as very sexually explicit. It is on the verge of porno in some scenes. I am surprised that they can get away with an R rating because there are two on ones, lesbian scenes, and more.
Christine Bale (?) performance is incredible. It was odd seeing him there watching the film because he was Patrick Bateman. His accent was perfect, his spectrum of emotion from passivity to rage was dead on. He added a layer of complexity to a character that could of easily been a cookie cutter serial killer.
The ending is odd and really makes you think enough to have to go back and see it again. Also the use of music and music refrences was perfect. As a child of the 80's I appreciated all the songs and the irony of there placement.
All and all, go with an open mind and see this film. It isn't as violent as you may think (it has some really gross stuff) and it leaves you feeling strangely Psychotic.
Bye.
Gacy
